"Q. How did we lose original justice?
"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 unto 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."[A]
[Footnote A: Douay Catechism, p. 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. Infidels, however, have treated the account of the fall and its effects, with contempt, and considered the whole as absurd; but their objections to the manner have been ably answered by a variety of authors; and as to the effects, one would hardly think any body could deny. For, that man is a fallen creature, is evident, if we consider his misery, as an inhabitant of the natural world; the disorders of the globe we inhabit, and the dreadful scourges with which it is visited; the deplorable and shocking circumstances of our birth; the painful and dangerous travail of women; our natural uncleanliness, helplessness, ignorance, and nakedness, the gross darkness in which we naturally are, both with respect to God and a future state; the general rebellion of the brute creation against us; the various poisons that lurk in the animal, vegetable, and mineral world, ready to destroy us; the heavy curse of toil and sweat to which we are liable; the innumerable calamities of life, and the pangs of death."[A]
[Footnote A: Buck's Theological Dictionary, p. 335.]