A treatise of original sin ... proving that it is

And if Adam had been made so righteous and glorious, yet subject to death he would have been like that building Paul supposeth, 1 Cor. 3. Whose foundation was of gold and precious stones, but the superstructure hay and stubble: Or like Nebuchadnezzar's Image, which was partly of gold, with other additaments, ⟨p. 516⟩and partly of clay; all which would have redounded to the dishonour of God his maker; neither could it so well be said, By one man, (or by the Devil) death came into the world, as by God who is supposed to make man in such a mortal and frail estate.

ANd if Adam had been made so righteous and glorious, yet subject to death he would have been like that building Paul supposeth, 1 Cor. 3. Whose foundation was of gold and precious stones, but the superstructure hay and stubble: Or like Nebuchadnezzar's Image, which was partly of gold, with other additaments, ⟨p. 516⟩and partly of clay; all which would have redounded to the dishonour of God his maker; neither could it so well be said, By one man, (or by the Devil) death came into the world, as by God who is supposed to make man in such a mortal and frail estate.

But I proceed to a second Argument, and that may be drawn from the commination made by God to Adam upon his disobedience, compared with the execution of this sentence afterward, which might be enough to convince any, though never so refractory. The threatening to Adam we have recorded, Gen. 2. 17. where God prohibiting him to eat of the Tree of knowledge of good and evil, confirmeth this Law with a penalty (viz.) That in the day he did eat thereof, he should surely die: dying thou shalt die; The gemination is to show the certainty, as also the continuance or it. So that Socinus and others, who would not understand corporal death in this place, as being from the natural constitution of a man, and so would have been, had there not been this commination, doth join too much with the Devil in this business; for his endeavour was to persuade the woman that this threatening was false, and that she should not die, death should not be the punishment of her transgression: But what need we any clearer place then this divine commination? Doth not this necessarily suppose, that if Adam had not transgressed, he should not have died, and so by consequence have been immortal, it being not possible for death to come in at any other door, but that of sin? To threaten a mortal man with mortality had been absurd, or to make his natural condition a punishment, for then it would have been a punishment to be made a man, if made mortal. The Socinians therefore to elude this, would not understand by death, the separation of the soul and body, but eternal death; or as they say at other times, a necessity of dying; but a necessary death and eternal death are absurdly made parallel by them. For beasts are under a necessity of death, yet cannot be said to partake of eternal death, especially the godly they cannot but die, yet they are absolutely delivered from eternal death. We must therefore take death for corporal death, not but that the death of the soul by sin here, and eternal separation from God hereafter, is to be included herein, yet this temporal death is also a great part of the penalty here threatened, which may be evinced by these three reasons: