It is to St.Augustine, a Carthaginian, that we are indebted for the precision of our views on these important points.
In deciding whether death had been in the world before the fall of Adam, or whether it was the penalty inflicted on the world for his sin, the course taken was to ascertain whether the views of Pelagius were accordant or discordant not with Nature but with the theological doctrines of St.Augustine.And the result has been such as might be expected.

The doctrine declared to be orthodox by ecclesiastical authority is overthrown by the unquestionable discoveries of modern science.

Long before a human being had appeared upon earth, millions of individuals--nay, more, thousands of species and even genera--had died; those which remain with us are an insignificant fraction of the vast hosts that have passed away.
A consequence of great importance issued from the decision of the Pelagian controversy.

The book of Genesis had been made the basis of Christianity.

If, in a theological point of view, to its account of the sin in the garden of Eden, and the transgression and punishment of Adam, so much weight had been attached, it also in a philosophical point of view became the grand authority of Patristic science.