What Was the Sin Whereby Our First Parents Fell from the Estate Wherein They Were Created?

A. The sin whereby our first parents fell from the estate wherein they were created, was their eating the forbidden fruit.*

a Gen. iii. 6. See in letter y.J Ver. 12: The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

the forbidden fruit. “There was no evil in the fruit itself. The evil of the matter lay in man’s eating it against the express command of God. God forbade it to be eaten, for the trial of man’s obedience. And the fitness of taking trial of man by that means, appears in that so it was taken in an external thing, in itself indifferent, wherein man’s obedience behoved to turn precisely upon the point of the will of God” (Boston).

“Not that I tasted of the tree, my son,
Was in itself the cause of that exile,
But only my transgressing of the mark
Assigned me.” — ADAM TO DANTE.

“The opinion of some of the ancients, that our first parents were allured by intemperance of appetite, is puerile. Augustine is more correct, who says that pride was the beginning of all evils, and that by pride the human race was ruined.... Unbelief was the root of defection, just as faith alone unites us to God” (Calvin).