nd breathed into
him the breath of life; He endowed him with reason, He adorned him with
freedom of choice and established him in the joys of Paradise, making
covenant aforehand that if he would remain without sin He would add him
and his offspring to the angelic hosts; so that as the higher nature had
fallen low through the curse of pride, the lower substance might ascend
on high through the blessing of humility. But the father of envy, loath
that man should climb to the place where he himself deserved not to
remain, put temptation before him and the consort whom the Creator had
brought forth out of his side for the continuance of the race, and laid
them open to punishment for disobedience, promising man also the gift of
Godhead, the arrogant attempt to seize which had caused his own fall.
All this was revealed by God to His servant Moses, whom He vouchsafed to
teach the creation and origin of man, as the books written by him
declare. For the divine authority is always conveyed in one of the
following ways--the historical, which simply announces facts; the
allegorical, whence historical matter is excluded; or else the two
combined, history and allegory conspiring to establish it. All this is
abundantly evident to pious hearers and steadfast believers.

But to return to the order of our discourse; the first man, before sin
came, dwelt with his consort in the Garden. But when he hearkened to the
voice of his wife and failed to keep the commandment of his Creator, he
was banished, bidden to till the ground, and being shut out from the
sheltering garden he carried abroad into unknown regions the children of
his loins; by begetting whom he transmitted to those that came after,
the punishment which he, the first man, had incurred by the sin of
disobedience. Hence it came to pass that corruption both of body and
soul ensued, and death; and this he was to taste first in his own son
Abel, in order that he might learn through his child the greatness of
the punishment that was laid upon him. For if he had died first he would
in some sense not have known, and if one may so say not have felt, his
punishment; but he tasted it in another in order that he might perceive
the due reward of his contempt, and, doomed to death himself, might be
the more sensibly touched by the apprehension of it. But this curse that
came of transgression which the first man had by natural pr