A. By Adam's disobedience to God in eating the forbidden fruit. Q. How do you prove that? A. Out of Rom. v: 12, "By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death; and so into all men death did pass, in whom all have sinned." Q. Had man ever died if he had never sinned? A. He would not, but would live in a state of justice and at length would be translated alive to the fellowship of the angels. [13] From a Protestant source I quote the following: In the fall of man we may observe: (1) The greatest infidelity. (2) Prodigious pride. (3) Horrid ingratitude. (4) Visible contempt of God's majesty and justice. (5) Unaccountable folly. (6) A cruelty to himself and to all his posterity. [14] Another Protestant authority says: The tree of knowledge of good and evil revealed to those who ate its fruit secrets of which they had better have remained ignorant; for the purity of man's happiness consisted in doing and loving good without even knowing evil. [15] From these several passages as also indeed from the whole tenor of Christian writings upon this subject, the fall of Adam is quite generally deplored and upon him is laid a very heavy burden of responsibility. It was he, they complain, who, Brought death into the world, and all our woe. One great division of Christendom in its creed, it is true, in dealing with the fall, concedes that "God was pleased according to his wise and holy counsel, to permit [the fall] having purposed to order it to his own glory." [16] And in an authoritative explanation of this section they say, "That this sin [the fall] was permissively embraced in the sovereign purpose of God." And still further in explanation: Its purpose [i. e., of the fall] being God's general plan, and one eminently wise and righteous, to introduce all the new created subjects of moral government into a state of probation for a time in which he makes their permanent character and destiny depend upon their own action. Still, this sin, described as being permissively embraced in the sovereign purpose of Deity, God designed "to order it to his own glory;" but it nowhere appears according to this confession of faith that the results of the fall are to be of any benefit to man. The only thing consulted in the theory of this creed seems to be the manifestation of the glory of God--a thing which represents God as a most selfish being--but just how the glory of God can be manifested by the "fall" which, according to this creed, results in the eternal damnation of the overwhelming majority of his "creatures," is not quite apparent.