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When, therefore, it is asked what death it was with which God
threatened our first parents if they should transgress the commandment
they had received from Him, and should fail to preserve their
obedience, whether it was the death of soul, or of body, or of the
whole man, or that which is called second death, we must answer, It
is all. For the first consists of two; the second is the complete
death, which consists of all. For, as the whole earth consists of
many lands, and the Church universal of many churches, so death
universal consists of all deaths. The first consists of two, one of
the body, and another of the soul. So that the first death is a death
of the whole man, since the soul without God and without the body
suffers punishment for a time: but the second is when the soul,
without God but with the body, suffers punishment everlasting.
When, therefore, God said to that first man whom he had placed in
Paradise, referring to the forbidden fruit," In the day that thou
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," that threatening included not
only the first part of the first death, by which the soul is deprived
of God; nor only the subsequent part of the first death, by which the
body is deprived of the soul; nor only the whole first death itself,
by which the soul is punished in separation from God and from the
body;, but it includes whatever of death there is, even to that final
death which is called second, and to which none is subsequent.
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