Chapter 4: Evils of fault set apart from evils of penalty
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PL.I distinguish evils.Some are of fault, others of penalty.God had forbidden the former by His law; He had not threatened them.He had threatened the latter; He had not forbidden them.Spiritual death—or privation of original righteousness—is an evil of fault, not a penalty properly so called.So the major is denied if it means evils of fault.And even of penalty-evils it is not universally true.Penalty-evils must be split into those that are, as they claim, satisfactory penalties, and those that stand somehow as prison pains and troubles, or as a father's chastisements.The law threatened only the former.Man falls into the latter by his sin because, for Christ's satisfaction, space was given him to repent, and God treats him as a father treats a boy.
Latin
PL. Distinguo mala. Alia enim sunt culpae, alia poenae. Illa Deus lege sua vetuerat, non comminatus fuerat: haec comminatus fuerat, non autem vetuerat. Est autem mors spiritualis seu privatio justitiae originalis malum culpae, non poenae proprie dictae. Negatur igitur Major, si de culpae malis intelligitur. Quanquam ne de malis quidem poenae intellecta universaliter vera est. Distingui enim debent mala poenae in ea quae sunt poenae, ut loquuntur, satisfactoriae, & ea quae se habent aliquomodo ut carceris poenae & molestiae, vel ut castigationes paternae. Illas solas lex comminabatur. Incurrit autem in has homo per peccatum suum, quia propter Christi satisfactionem datum est ei ad resipiscendum spatium, & tractatur a Deo, ut solet a patre filius puer.