ia a
corde. Alia accidentia sunt inseparabilia, ut quantitas seu magnitudo a
substantia corporea, calor ab igni, humiditas ab aqua, non separantur...
Et quia separabilia accidentia magis conspicua sunt, ideo inde sumpta
est puerilis descriptio: Accidens est, quod adest et abest praeter
subiecti corruptionem. Whatever is present or absent without the
corruption of the subject is an accident." (_C. R._ 13, 523; Preger 2,
396. 407; Seeberg 4, 494.)

Evidently this last definition, which was employed also by Strigel, is
ambiguous, inasmuch as the word "corruption" may signify an
annihilation, or merely a perversion, or a corruption in the ordinary
meaning of the word. In the latter sense the term applied to original
sin would be tantamount to a denial of the Lutheran doctrine of _total_
corruption. When Jacob Andreae, in his disputation with Flacius, 1571,
at Strassburg, declared that accident is something which is present or
absent without _corruption_ of the subject, he employed the term in the
sense of destruction or annihilation. In the same year Hesshusius stated
that by original sin "the whole nature body and soul, substance as well
as accidents, are defiled, corrupted, and dead," of course, spiritually.
And what he understood by substance appears from his assertion: "The
being itself, the substance and nature itself, in as far as it is
nature, is not an evil conflicting with the Law of God.... Not even in
the devil the substance itself, in as far as it is substance, is a bad
thing, _i.e._, a thing conflicting with the Law." (Preger 2, 397.)

The _Formula of Concord_ carefully and correctly defines: "Everything
that is must be either _substantia_, that is, a self-existent essence,
or _accidens_, that is, an accidental matter, which does not exist by
itself essentially but is in another self-existent essence and can be
distinguished from it." "Now, then, since it is the indisputable truth
that everything that is, is either a substance or an _accidens_ that is,
either a self-existing essence or something accidental in it (as has
just been shown and proved by testimonies of the church-teachers, and no
truly intelligent man has ever had any doubts concerning this),
necessity here constrains, and no one can evade it if the question be
asked whether original sin is a substance, that is, such a thing as
exists by itself, and is not in another, or whether it is an _accidens_,
that is, such a thing as does not exist by itself