Note 152 — Quest. XLIV.
Reading edition
“That death is a punishment for sin, and that all mankind are by death offered as a sacrifice for sin, is not only a doctrine of revealed Religion, but the plain dictate of Reason. For, though it is Revelation alone that can teach us, how God threatened death as the punishment of a particular sin, yet Reason must be obliged to acknowledge, that men die, because they are sinners. But if men die, because they are sinners, and Reason itself must receive this, as the most justifiable cause of Death; then Reason must allow, that the death of all mankind is appointed by the true God, as a sacrifice for sin. But, if Reason must acknowledge the death of all mankind as a sacrifice for sin, then it can have no just objection against the sacrifice of Christ, because it was human.
“Revelation, therefore, teaches nothing more hard to be believed on this point, than Reason teaches. For, if it be just and fit in God, to appoint and devote all men to death, as the proper punishment of their sins; how can it be proved to be unjust and unfit in God, to receive the death of Jesus Christ, for the same ends?”
Human Reason.