Page "religion" Paragraph 62

`` Wherefore also He ( God ) drove him ( man ) out of Paradise, and removed him far from the tree of life, not because He envied him the tree of life, as some venture to assert, but because He pitied him, ( and did not desire ) that he should continue a sinner for ever, nor that the sin which surrounded him should be immortal, and evil interminable and irremediable.

But He set a bound to his ( state of ) sin, by interposing death, and thus causing sin to cease, putting an end to it by the dissolution of the flesh, which should take place in the earth, so that man, ceasing at length to live in sin, and dying to it, might live to God ''.

This idea, which occurs in both Tatian and Cyprian, fits especially well into the scheme of Irenaeus' theology ; ;

for it prepares the way for the passage from life through death to life that is achieved in Christ.

As man can live only by dying, so it was only by his dying that Christ could bring many to life.