infinitives - Past tense and "rather than"


I found myself with a sentence like this, using "accept" in the infinitive form after "rather than":



They left the club, rather than accept the terms.



But I'm unsure of its grammatical soundness. Conjugating the verb "accept" just sounds wrong:



They left the club, rather than accepted the terms.



The gerund sounds right, but I'm not sure why:



They left the club, rather than accepting the terms.



What is the grammatically correct way of phrasing this sort of sentence, and why?



[SUBJECT] [PAST_ACTION_1], rather than [PAST_ACTION_2]





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