Adam and Eve could not mistake the requirement of this law, nor fail to understand the intent of the penalty. And before Satan could cause his temptation to make any impression on the mind of Eve, he had to contradict this threatening, assuring her that they should not surely die. A question of veracity was thus raised between God and Satan; and strange to say, the theological world, in interpreting the penalty, have virtually, with the exception of a small minority, sided with Satan. This is seen in the interpretation which is commonly put on this penalty, making it consist of three divisions: 1. Alienation of the soul from God, the love of sin, and the hatred of holiness, called spiritual death. 2. The separation of soul and body, called temporal death. 3. Immediately after temporal death, the conscious torment of the soul in hell, which is to have no end, and is called eternal death. The Baptist Confession of Faith, Art. 5, says:-- “We believe that God made man upright; but he, sinning, involved himself and posterity in death spiritual, temporal, and eternal; from all which there is no deliverance but by Christ.” Let us look at the different installments of this penalty, and see if they will harmonize with the language in which the original threatening is expressed: “Thou shalt surely die.” Adam incurred the penalty by sinning. After he had sinned, he was a sinner. But a state of sin is that state of alienation from God which the orthodox school make to be a part of the penalty of his transgression. In this they take as the _punishment_ of sin that which was simply its _result_; and they make the sentence read, virtually, in this profoundly sensible manner: “In the day that thou sinnest, thou shalt surely be a sinner!” Because he wickedly became a sinner, and brought himself into a state of alienation from God, the doom was pronounced upon him, “Thou shalt surely die.” Could this mean eternal death? If so, Adam never could have been released therefrom. But he is to be released from it; for “in Christ shall all be made alive.” These two installments, then, spiritual and eternal death, utterly fail us, when brought to the test of the language in which the sentence is expressed: one is nonsense, and the other an impossibility.