# Theodore Beza on the bondage of the will



## Reformed Covenanter (Aug 19, 2021)

*Q186* *But certainly that necessity, which together with lust entered the heart of man, in such a manner that he could not help but sin (just as you declared before), seems to remove contingency.

A186* Although I should confess it to be so, still men cannot be exempted from blame. First, because this necessity of sinning, with which the human race is now oppressed, is not from the Creator, but from the spontaneous (as we have said) inclination of man’s natural will to evil. Moreover, who would marvel that he is burned, who hurls himself willingly into a fire? Again, although man is not now carried to evil contingently or by chance, but out of utter necessity, since after the corruption of sin (as the Apostle said) he is enslaved to sin, until freed by the Son of God. Yet that which he does, he does spontaneously, and not from coercion.

For just as he cannot help but do evil, so also he delights in nothing other than evil, while the evil, now and then lurking under the guise of good, deceives him. And therefore, not even this necessity, which was brought in through the spontaneous fall, does remove the spontaneous moving of the will. With that granted, it follows that man is the cause of sin, since, although he sins necessarily, he also sins willingly. But still I do not even say that contingency is removed by this necessity. For although in a man who is bound under the necessity of sin, and is not yet regenerated, there now remains no deliberation either to choose the true good, or evil, as was in human nature before the Fall; still there remains a deliberating between this or that evil. ...

For more, see Theodore Beza on the bondage of the will.

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