"Wherefore also He drove [Adam] out of Paradise, and removed him far from the tree of life, not because He envied [Adam] the tree of life, as some venture to assert, but because He pitied [Adam], [and did not desire] that he should continue a sinner forever, nor that the sin which surrounded him should be immortal, and evil interminable and irremediable. But He set a bound to [Adam's state of] sin, by interposing death, and thus causing sin to cease ...so that man, ceasing at length to live to sin, and dying to it, might begin to live in God." Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.xxxiii.6, cited in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., The ante-Nicene Fathers, 1:457.
Favorite scriptures and quotes from Church leaders and other wise men and women