Excerpt from The City of God, Vol. 2: De Civitate Dei But here is a question not to be omitted: whether the first death be good to the good? If it be so, how can it be the punishment of sin? For had not our first parents sinned, they had never tasted it: how then can it be good to the upright that can happen only to offenders? And if it happen only to Offenders, it would not be good, for it would not be at all unto the upright: for why should they have punishment that have no guilt? We must confess, then, that had not our first parents sinned, they had not died but sinning, the punishment of death was inflicted upon them and all their posterity: for they should not produce anything but what themselves were, and the greatness of their crime depraved their nature: so that that which was penal in the first man's Offending, was made natural in the birth Of all the rest: for they came not of man, as man came of the dust. The dust was man's material: but man is man's parent. That which is earth is not flesh, though flesh be made of earth: but that which man the father is, man the son is also. For all mankind was in the first man, to be derived from him by the woman, when this couple received their sentence of condemnation. And that which man was made, not in his creation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.