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But it is a fair question, whether our first parent or first parents
(for there was a marriage of two), before they sinned, experienced
in their animal body such emotions as we shall not experience in the
spiritual body when sin has been purged and finally abolished. For if
they did, then how were they blessed in that boasted place of bliss,
Paradise? For who that is affected by fear or grief can be called
absolutely blessed? And what could those persons fear or suffer in
such affluence of blessings, where neither death nor ill-health was
feared, and where nothing was wanting which a good will could desire,
and nothing present which could interrupt man's mental or bodily
enjoyment? Their love to God was unclouded, and their mutual
affection was that of faithful and sincere marriage; and from this love
flowed a wonderful delight, because they always enjoyed what was
loved. Their avoidance of sin was tranquil; and, so long as it was
maintained, no other ill at all could invade them and bring sorrow.
Or did they perhaps desire to touch and eat the forbidden fruit, yet
feared to die; and thus both fear and desire already, even in that
blissful place, preyed upon those first of mankind? Away with the
thought that such could be the case where there was no sin! And,
indeed, this is already sin, to desire those things which the law of
God forbids, and to abstain from them through fear of punishment, not
through love of righteousness. Away, I say, with the thought, that
before there was any sin, there should already have been committed
regarding that fruit the very sin which our Lord warns us against
regarding a woman: "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her,
hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." As happy,
then, as were these our first parents, who were agitated by no mental
perturbations, and annoyed by no bodily discomforts, so happy should
the whole human race have been, had they not introduced that evil which
they have transmitted to their" posterity, and had none of their
descendants committed iniquity worthy of damnation; but this original
blessedness continuing until, in virtue of that benediction which
said, "Increase and multiply," the number of the predestined saints
should have been completed, there would then have been bestowed that
higher felicity which is enjoyed by the most blessed angels, a
blessedness in which there should have been a secure assurance that no
one would sin, and no one die; and so should the saints have lived,
after no taste of labor, pain, or death, as now they shall live in
the resurrection, after they have endured all these things.
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