Wherefore also He drove him out of
Paradise, and removed him far from the tree of life, not because He envied him
the tree of life, as some venture to assert, but because He pitied him, [and
did not desire] that he should continue a sinner for ever, nor that the sin
which surrounded him should be immortal, and evil interminable and
irremediable. But He set a bound to his [state of] sin, by interposing death,
and thus causing sin to cease, putting an end to it by the dissolution of the
flesh, which should take place in the earth, so that man, ceasing at length to
live to sin, and dying to it, might begin to live to God. (Irenaeus of Lyons, Against
Heresies 3.23.6 [ANF 1:457])