Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Why Adam girded himself with fig leaves; and why God cast Adam out of Paradise.
With Adam, however, nothing of this sort happened, but everything was the opposite. For having been seduced by another under the pretext of immortality, he is at once seized with fear and hides himself — not as though he could escape God, but because, ashamed at having transgressed his commandment, he considered himself unworthy to come into the sight and conversation of God. Now dread of the Lord marks the start of wisdom, and awareness of the wrongdoing brought about repentance; and to those who repent God grants his goodness. For indeed by the girdle he made he showed his repentance, covering himself with fig leaves, although there were many other leaves that would have troubled his body less; yet he made a garment fitting for his disobedience, terrified by fear of God, and restraining the wanton impulse of the flesh, since he had lost his innocent and childlike disposition and had come into the contemplation of worse things — he set upon himself and his wife a curb of self-restraint, standing in awe of God and looking for his arrival, and signifying, as it were, something of this sort: Since I have lost the robe of holiness which I had from the Spirit through disobedience, I now recognize that I deserve such a covering, which affords no pleasure at all, but rather chafes and pricks the body. And he would always have kept this garment, humbling himself, had not the Lord, who is merciful, clothed them with tunics of skin instead of fig leaves.
For this reason also he questions them, so that the accusation might come round to the woman; and he questions her in turn, so that she might pass the blame on to the serpent. For she said what had happened: The serpent, she said, seduced me, and I ate. But he did not question the serpent, for he knew that it had become the author of the transgression; rather he first pronounced the curse upon it, so that the second rebuke might then come upon man. For God hated the one who had seduced man, but toward the one who had been seduced he was gradually and little by little merciful. For this reason he likewise drove him out of Paradise and set him at a distance from the tree of life — not because he begrudged him the tree of life, as some dare to say, but because he had compassion on him, so that he should not remain forever a transgressor, nor should the sin that lay around him be immortal and evil without limit or cure. He therefore restrained his transgression by interposing death, causing sin to cease, putting a stop to it through the flesh's dissolution, a process appointed to occur within the earth, so that man, at length ceasing his life of sin and undergoing death to it, could commence living unto God instead.