Chapter 1.—Of the Fall of the
First Man, Through Which Mortality Has Been Contracted.
Having
disposed of the very difficult questions concerning the origin of
our world and the beginning of the human race, the natural order
requires that we now discuss the fall of the first man (we may say
of the first men), and of the origin and propagation of human
death. For God had not made man like the angels, in such a
condition that, even though they had sinned, they could none the
more die. He had so made them, that if they discharged the
obligations of obedience, an angelic immortality and a blessed
eternity might ensue, without the intervention of death; but if
they disobeyed, death should be visited on them with just
sentence—which, too, has been spoken to in the preceding
book.