Question. What was that image, according to which you say that man was fashioned?
Answer. It was the most complete righteousness and the most perfect holiness, which properly belong to the very nature of God. This image was in man until man, by the stains of sin, marred it.
Scripture Reference: Deut. 32:3-4; Rom. 9:14; Col. 3:10; 1 John 1:5, 2:29, and 3:3; Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-14
Question. Tell me how this came to pass.
Answer. The woman, deceived by the devil, persuaded the man to take the fruit which God had forbidden them, whereby the Image according to which they were created was defaced; and both they and their posterity became disobedient to God, perverse and unable to all goodness, and subject not only to all worldly miseries, bodily diseases, and temporal death, but also to eternal death and everlasting damnation..
Scripture Reference: Gen. 3:1; Wis. 1:13,14; 1 Cor. 2:14; Rom. 8:7-8; 2 Cor. 3:5; Rom. 6:23; Eph. 5:5-6
Question. But may it not seem that God punished the tasting of an apple too harshly?
Answer. Let no man lessen the most heinous offense of man as a small trespass, and weigh the deed by the apple and by only the excess of gluttony. For he, with his wife, caught and snared by the deceitful allurements of Satan, by unbelief revolted from the truth of God to a lie. He gave credit to the false suggestions of the serpent, in which he accused God of untruth, of envy, and of malicious withholding of some goodness. Having received so many benefits, he became most unthankful toward God, the giver of them. He, the child of the earth, not content that he was made according to the Image of God, with intolerable ambition and pride sought to make himself equal with the Majesty of God. Finally, he withdrew himself from allegiance to his Creator, and proudly shook off His yoke. Therefore it is vain to lessen the sin of Adam.
Scripture Reference: Gen. 3:3-6, 11, 22, 1:26-27; Psalm 8:4-6 and 104:14-15; Col. 3:10 and Hosea 6:7