Jeremy Taylor on Death in Man

Picking up my previously begun theme of creation, fall, and death, here is an interesting passage from the great Anglican divine Jeremy Taylor's masterpiece, Holy Dying:

"That death therefore which God threatened Adam, and which passed upon his posterity, is not the going out of this world, but the manner of going. If he had stayed in innocence, he should have gone from hence placidly and fairly, without vexatious and afflictive circumstances; he should not have died by sickness, misfortune, defect, or unwillingness; but when he fell, then he began to die; "the same day," so said God, and that must needs be true: and therefore it must mean that upon that very day he fell into an evil and dangerous condition, a state of change and affliction; then death began, that is, the man began to die by a natural diminution, and aptness to disease and misery. His first state was, and should have been so long it lasted, a happy duration; his second was a daily and miserable change, and this was the dying properly.

"This appears in the great instance of damnation, which, in the style of scripture, is called eternal death: not because it kills or ends the duration; it hath not so much good in it; but because it is a perpetual infelicity. Change or seperation of soul and body is but accidental to death; death may be with or without either: but the formality, the curse and sting of death, that is, misery, sorrow, fear, diminution, defect, anguish, dihonour, and whatsoever is miserable and afflictive in nature, that is death. Death is not an action, but a whole state and condition; and this was first brought in upon us by the offence of one man."

Chapter III, Section I