Edition ausblenden
De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput I: De lapsu primorum hominum, per quem est contracta mortalitas.

Expeditis de nostri saeculi exortu et de initio generis humani difficillimis quaestionibus nunc iam de lapsu primi hominis, immo primorum hominum, et de origine ac propagine mortis humanae disputationem a nobis institutam rerum ordo deposcit. non enim eo modo, quo angelos, condiderat deus homines, ut etiam si peccassent mori omnino non possent; sed ita ut perfunctos oboedientiae munere sine interuentu mortis angelica inmortalitas et beata aeternitas sequeretur; inoboedientes autem mors plecteret damnatione iustissima; quod etiam in libro superiore iam diximus.

Übersetzung ausblenden
The City of God

Chapter 1.--Of the Fall of the First Man, Through Which Mortality Has Been Contracted.

Having disposed of the very difficult questions concerning the origin of our world and the beginning of the human race, the natural order requires that we now discuss the fall of the first man (we may say of the first men), and of the origin and propagation of human death. For God had not made man like the angels, in such a condition that, even though they had sinned, they could none the more die. He had so made them, that if they discharged the obligations of obedience, an angelic immortality and a blessed eternity might ensue, without the intervention of death; but if they disobeyed, death should be visited on them with just sentence--which, too, has been spoken to in the preceding book.