ARGUMENT.
IN THIS BOOK IT IS TAUGHT THAT DEATH IS PENAL, AND HAD ITS ORIGININ ADAM'S SIN.
CHAP.1.--OF THE FALL OF THE FIRST MAN, THROUGHWHICH 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.
CHAP.2.--OF THAT DEATH WHICH CAN AFFECT
AN IMMORTAL SOUL, AND OF THAT TO WHICH THE BODY IS SUBJECT.
But I see I must speak a little more carefully of the nature of death.
For although the human soul is truly affirmed to be immortal, yet it also has a certain death of its own.For it is therefore called immortal, because, in a sense, it does not cease to live and to feel; while the body is called mortal, because it can be forsaken of all life, and cannot by itself live at all.The death, then, of the soul takes place when God forsakes it, as the death of the body when the soul forsakes it.Therefore the death of both--that is, of the whole man--occurs when the soul, forsaken by God, forsakes the body.For, in this case, neither is God the life of the soul, nor the soul the life of the body.And this death of the whole man is followed by that which, on the authority of the divine oracles, we call the second death.This the Saviour referred to when He said, "Fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."(1) And since this does not happen before the soul is so joined to its body that they cannot be separated at all, it may be matter of wonder how the body can be said to be killed by that death in which it is not forsaken by the soul, but, being animated and rendered sensitive by it, is tormented.For in that penal and everlasting punishment, of which in its own place we are to speak more at large, the soul is justly said to die, because it does not live in connection with God; but how can we say that the body is dead, seeing that it lives by the soul? For it could not otherwise feel the bodily torments which are to follow the resurrection.Is it because life of every kind is good, and pain an evil, that we decline to say that that body lives, in which the soul is the cause, not of life, but of pain? The soul, then, lives by God when it lives well, for it cannot live well unless by God working in it what is good; and the body lives by the soul when the soul lives in the body, whether itself be living by God or no.For the wicked man's life in the body is a life not of the soul, but of the body, which even dead souls--that is, souls forsaken of God--can confer upon bodies, how little so-ever of their own proper life, by which they are immortal, they retain.
But in the last damnation, though man does not cease to feel, yet because this feeling of his is neither sweet with pleasure nor wholesome with repose, but painfully penal, it is not without reason called death rather than life.And it is called the second death because it follows the first, which sunders the two cohering essences, whether these be God and the soul, or the soul and the body.Of the first and bodily death, then, we may say that to the good it is good, and evil to the evil.But, doubtless, the second, as it happens to none of the good, so it can be good for none.
CHAP.3.--WHETHER DEATH, WHICH BY THE SINOF OUR FIRST PARENTS HAS PASSED UPON ALL MEN, IS THE PUNISHMENT OF SIN, EVEN TO THE GOOD.
But a question not to be shirked arises: Whether in very truth death, which separates soul and body, is good to the good?(1) For if it be, how has it come to pass that such a thing should be the punishment of sin?
For the first men would not have suffered death had they not sinned.How, then, can that be good to the good, which could not have happened except to the evil? Then, again, if it could only happen to the evil, to the good it ought not to be good, but non-existent.For why should there be any punishment where there is nothing to punish? Wherefore we must say that the first men were indeed so created, that if they had not sinned, they would not have experienced any kind of death; but that, having become sinners, they were so punished with death, that whatsoever sprang from their stock should also be punished with the same death.For nothing else could be born of them than that which they themselves had been.Their nature was deteriorated in proportion to the greatness of the condemnation of their sin, so that what existed as punishment in those who first sinned, became a natural consequence in their children.For man is not produced by man, as he was from the dust.For dust was the material out of which man was made: man is the parent by whom man is begotten.Wherefore earth and flesh are not the same thing, though flesh be made of earth.But as man the parent is, such is man the offspring.In the first man, therefore, there existed the whole human nature, which was to be transmitted by the woman to posterity, when that conjugal union received the divine sentence of its own condemnation;and what man was made, not when created, but when he sinned and was punished, this he propagated, so far as the origin of sin and death are concerned.