On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants

Chapter 8 [VIII.]—Bodily Death from Adam’s Sin.

When to the like purport he says: “By man came death, by man also the resurrection of the dead,” in what other sense can the passage be understood than of the death of the body; for having in view the mention of this, he proceeded to speak of the resurrection of the body, and affirmed it in a most earnest and solemn discourse? In these words, addressed to the Corinthians: “By man came death, and by man came also the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,”—what other meaning is indeed conveyed than in the verse in which he says to the Romans, “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin?” Now they will have it, that the death here meant is the death, not of the body, but of the soul, on the pretence that another thing is spoken of to the Corinthians, where they are quite unable to understand the death of the soul, because the subject there treated is the resurrection of the body, which is the antithesis of the death of the body. The reason, moreover, why only death is here mentioned as caused by man, and not sin also, is because the point of the discourse is not about righteousness, which is the antithesis of sin, but about the resurrection of the body, which is contrasted with the death of the body.