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.
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