Therefore God added the commandment that man might thereby learn to understand his own nature and to fear his Lawgiver. And we may certainly perceive the lovingkindness of that Lawgiver, for He did not add some Law which was difficult to heed but one which could have been easily kept. He allowed to [Adam] the enjoyment of all the trees, of one alone He forbade him the use; not that He envied him that one (for how could He do so, who had already given him power over all?) but in order to teach him the terms of submission and to render him well-disposed towards his Creator and provide a means for the exercise of his rational faculties. And if then, by not keeping the commandment he came under sentence of death, this can be no cause for blame to the Lawgiver but to him who transgressed the law.… But indeed the Lord God has treated with every possible consideration and kindness both Adam himself and all his race, and—to pass by all other and come at once to the heart of the matter—for him and his race the only-begotten Word became incarnate and put an end to the power of death, which from him had received its beginning, and promised the resurrection, and prepared the kingdom of heaven, and so He both foreknew his transgression and made ready beforehand the means of remedy to follow.
Theodoret of Cyrus, "The Letter to the Romans" on Romans 7:11-12
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