In the beginning¹ God made all things very good, created man after His own² image and likeness, filling him with all perfection of all natural excellency and uprightness, free from all sin.³ But long he abode not in this honor, but by the⁴ subtlety of the serpent, which Satan used as his instrument, himself with his angels having sinned before, and not⁵ kept their first estate, but left their own habitation; first⁶ Eve, then Adam being seduced did wittingly and willingly fall into disobedience and transgression of the commandment of their great Creator, for the which death came upon all, and reigned over all, so that all since the fall are conceived in sin, and brought forth in iniquity, and so by nature children of wrath, and servants of sin, subjects of⁷ death, and all other calamities due to sin in this world and forever, being considered in the state of nature, without relation to Christ.

1. Genesis 1; Isaiah 45:12; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 11:3  ↩︎
2. Genesis 1:26; Ecclesiastes 7:31; 1 Corinthians 15:45–46 ↩︎
3. Psalm 49:20 ↩︎
4. Genesis 3:1, 4–5; 2 Corinthians 11:3 ↩︎
5. John 8:44; 2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6 ↩︎
6. Genesis 3:1–2, 6; Ecclesiastes 7:31; Galatians 3:22; 1 Timothy 2:14 ↩︎
7. Romans 5:12, [sic]  18–19; 6:23; Ephesians 2:3 ↩︎