Canons of the Council of Carthage (418)

The council met in the consulship of Honorius for the twelfth time and Theodosius for the eighth, on the Kalends of May, and Bishop Aurelius presided. Its canons were taken into the collection approved at Carthage the following year, which is how they are preserved.

Each canon condemns a proposition: that Adam was created mortal and would have died whether he sinned or not; that infants have no original sin to be remitted in baptism; that grace only forgives past sins, or only teaches what to do; that the commandments could be kept without grace, though less easily; and that the saints ask forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer only out of humility. They are the African bishops’ own definition of what they rejected. They do not name Pelagius, and a proposition condemned in a canon is not for that reason proved to have been taught by him in those words. One further canon, on the fate of unbaptised infants, is found in only some manuscripts.