1 You may be wondering why, having proposed to speak of the Incarnation of the Word, we are now discussing the origin of humankind. But this too properly belongs to the aim of our treatise. 2 For in speaking of the Savior's appearance among us, we must also speak of the origin of humankind, so that you may know that we were the reason He came down, and that our transgression called forth the loving-kindness of the Word, so that the Lord would both hurry to help us and appear among men. 3 For we were the reason for His becoming Incarnate, and for our salvation He showed such love as to appear and be born even in a human body. 4 In this way, then, God made man and willed that he should remain in incorruption; but people, having despised and rejected the contemplation of God, and devised and contrived evil for themselves (as was said in the former treatise), received the sentence of death with which they had been threatened. From then on they no longer remained as they were made, but were being corrupted according to their own schemes, and death ruled over them as king. For transgressing the commandment was turning them back to their natural state, so that, just as they had their being out of nothing, so too, as might be expected, they might look for corruption into nothing in the course of time. 5 For if, out of a former natural state of non-existence, they were called into being by the Presence and loving-kindness of the Word, it naturally followed that when people were stripped of the knowledge of God and turned back to what is not (for what is evil is not, but what is good is), they should, since they derive their being from God who IS, be forever stripped even of being; in other words, they should disintegrate and remain in death and corruption. 6 For man is mortal by nature, since he is made out of what is not; but because of his likeness to Him who is (and if he still preserved this likeness by keeping Him in his knowledge), he would hold off his natural corruption and remain incorrupt; as Wisdom says: Paying attention to His laws is the assurance of immortality.⁠a And being incorrupt, he would live from then on as God, which I suppose divine Scripture refers to when it says: I said, you are gods, and you are all sons of the Most High; but you die like men, and fall like one of the princes.