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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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