(And certainly) Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree, and yet they lived in their flesh afterwards for more than nine hundred years. And so, it is clear that he did not die in the flesh. If, therefore, he did not die in his soul, which is wrong to suggest, then God gave him a false sentence, as he said that he would die on the day that he ate.
But let the true faith be free of this error, let it be free. For we say that the first man died in the soul on the day he sinned, and through him the whole human race died in the soul on the day of this penalty of death and corruption. But through the second man, we trust that we can be freed both now from death of the soul, and afterwards from all corruption of the flesh in eternal resurrection. And just as we said to the aforesaid emissaries, we say that the soul of Adam died in sin, not from the substance of living, but from the quality of his life. For because ssubstance is one thing and quality is another, his soul did not die so that he did not exist, but it died so that he was not blessed. Yet this Adam returned afterwards to lofe, through penitence.
And we know that our brother and fellow-bishop, Cyriacus, is orthodox, yet because of others, we ought to be cautious, so that the seeds of error are crushed before they appear in public.
Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), II, 487
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