at thy sole disposall These shall allways receive laws from thy pleasure and motions from thy beck Nor shall their velocity nimblenesse or terriblenesse be able to render them contumacious to thee Give them names as thou pleasest that so they may the more willingly obey thee and may be the more strongly obleiged to thy commands In reward of all this that I have done for thee I demand no more but a bare acknowledgement I have given thee the Monarchy of the Earth I may well therefore reserve to my selfe the Supremacy with a small tribute as a badge of my superiority and thy obedience Therefore suffer not the allurement of thy taste to perswade thee to eate of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evill for if thou dost thou shalt feele the severity of death God first named the Fishes and afterwards all the other Animalls to teach those in Authority to have a more especial care of the irremotest Subjects as those who may be more easily opprest by their Ministers and Officers or to give them to understand that they take those into protection which like the Fishes are naked and cannot speake His divine Majesty forbade Adam the fruites of the tree of knowledge of good and evil because having the power over all things created he should not excercise the same with pride and ambition God would have Adam command with the curb of being commanded There being nothing will more moderate the Statelynesse of a Prince then his subjection to Law Or else the fruits of this tree having a virtue to make Man know the misery of Mankind God forbad Adam to taste of it both because he would have him free from all those inquietudes which did accompany the necessities of the body and because he would have him imploy all the ardor of his affections in a carefull sollicitude for the welfare of his soul God gave Adam a Prohibition to eat of the fruits of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evill although he knew he would not observe it to shew that Laws are necessary notwithstanding they may be abused And againe how could God triumph in the excesses of his mercy in the extremes of his goodnesse in the trophyes of his justice if he should not permitt man to sinne and if he should favour all universally with efficacious grace God threatned Adam with death as the punishment of his transgression because Death is the extreamest of all evills and the greatest of all terrours All other evills all other pains had so-much of bitternesse as they had affinity resemblance to death Death is the Center in which all the lines of worldly passions meete His Divine Majesty might have prescribed him Hell but he would propose a chastisement of which there was no retraction by repentance and with all because he knew that humane affections were more to be moved and amated with the certaine knowledge of a small evill then with the incertain beleife of a greater His Divine Majesty made all Birds and other Animals of the earth to come before Adam that from him who had received from God the knowledge of their Natures they should receive their Names The Lord did this to make Adam see by comparison how much he was obliged in seeing himselfe so different and so upright above all other Creatures Or because God having created Man Prince of all creatures would have him know his vassalls and the Animals reverence him as their Prince Or else he permitted that he should name the creatures according to their natures to shew him what a gift of wisdome he had bestowed upon him that so sinning he might not excuse himselfe with ignorance The animalls came by two and two with an obedience moved by the divine will to receive their names Adam sitting in an eminent place with a face so full of splendor that breathing Majesty it taught veneration he gave them names proper to their natures calling them one by one in the Hebrew tongue which was the universall language untill the confusion of tongues The Fishes came not either because they could not live out of their element or because they could no way be serviceable to man not as yet used for food or else because God would thereby give us to understand that Grandees in Progresses should not expect the attendance of their poor vassalls who cannot stirre from home to accompany their Lord or to attend him at his beck God permitted Adam should give names to all creatures but not to Himselfe to give him to understand that as all other creatures were his inferiours having taken their names from him so on the contrary he should acknowledg God for his Lord seeing he had been named by him In the mean time his Divine Majesty considered that it was not good for man to be alone for there 's little contentment in those delights we receive without other's participation Or else it was that God foreseeing that the heighth of his glory consisted in acts of Clemency and Mercy would not have man to be alone those faults seldom proving either great or frequent which have not company for spurres incentives He would therfore provide him of a fit Companion in his owne likenesse that so he might love her the more and she might be more capable of assisting him Whereupon he cast Adam into I know not whether an exstasy or a ravishing slumber It was Gods pity that he should be asleepe for he knew that in the company of woman hee should lose his sleep Or else He made him shut his eyes to shew that he would have men blind in understanding Divine operations Or else it might be that he cast Adam into a sleep as if he feared that he would contradict him whilest with the spirit of prophesy given him he might foresee the mischeifes accrewing to mankinde in the making of Eve And besides men are with much difficulty perswaded to part with any thing of what they have though therby to receive the greater profit Whereupon God would bereave him in his sleep of that which perhaps he would not have consented to have parted with of himself Whilst Adam was taken up with the dulcity of repose rejoycing in those phantasms with which he was honoured of the most abstruce secrets of secular adventures the power of God which hath no impossibility that can prescribe it bounds took with a delicacy which is to be supposed in a Divine hand a ribbe of which he formed Eve filling up the void place with flesh God was pleased to make Woman of Man to shew the union affection that ought to be in Matrimony or to admonish women to acknowledge with obedience the cause of their being God made choice of the ribb taken from the left side to advert us that the woman ought to be the heart of the man and not his head Or God tooke a ribb of Adam in the making of Woman because being about to forme a body worse haply than
a presuming too high upon our selves The woman put the pain of the transgression in doubt saying Perhaps we shal be subject to death because we faine those things always easy and of litle danger which we most desire and put the Judgements of God ever in uncertainty so much the more in that incredulity is the particular defect of the Woman The Divell animated by the lye and incredulity of the Woman began to hope for victory perswading her to violate the precept of God He indeavour'd therefore with admirable artifice to remove the fear of the punishment menaced by his Divine Majesty to allure her with the hope of that good which is the most desirable to man Wherefore he said unto her Comfort your self ô Woman your fears are vaine for death is an imaginary subject to terrify the simplicity of the more weak How can a thing die that is the immediate production of Gods hands It would be too great a disparagement to the divine workmanship to say that his labours could be subject to death Works that have took their qualities from God cannot dissolve without the dissolution of God himselfe He hath intimated death unto you as being an ordinary thing in them that command to menace their vassalls with impossible chastisements for to be served with the more blind obedience He prohibited you to tast of this fruit because he feared that ye should be equall to Him And he that hath Supreame authority can very hardly be perswaded to admit of Competitors Envy is of the quality of thunder that smites the sublimest things Her fangs exempt not Divinity it selfe God knows very well that with tasting these fruits you shall open the eyes of your understanding and obtaine the science of good and evill And what is it that renders God considerable what makes God admirable what maketh God GOD more than this knowledge These words of the Serpent were false impious absurd and incredible He made God a Lyer and Envious He would perswade that a Tree had power to communicate Sapience and that men with this should equall themselves with God and this by taking the fruit to eate The woman not adverted of this so impious and so impossible a falsity was deceived by his promises The Ambition of becoming equall with God and the desire of tasting the Apple forbidden deprived her of judgment and reason What thing more contrary to sense and possibility than to style truth falshood and clemency envy and to say that by tasting this fruite we should gaine the Sapience and similitude of God Yet in the opinion of the Woman these things past for truths because when Women treat of their interests they take shadows for substances The Woman might have said to the Serpent If thy words be not masked with deceits wherfore takest not thou of that fruite and givest that to thy selfe which thou promisest to me How came I to merit so much of thy affection that thou shouldest desire that I should first obtaine a benefit so great a prerogative so rare as to be divine Eat thou first and testify whether thy promises are true If God envying our state so great a felicity did prohibit us this Tree why did he not rather not create it or having made it extirpate it The unfortunate woman believed all for truth because she desired all to be true She did not contradict him because she reputed it a lesse crime to sin with the hazzard of acquiring divinity than by not sinning to lose the hope though impossible of obtaining it Howbeit the words of the Serpent were full of fallacie and ambiguity The not-dying might be understood of dying presently upon the transgression or of the death of the soule The opening the eyes referred to the misery confusion in which man should be after the sinne The resemblance to God might signify the Divell Lastly the knowledge of good and evill might be ment by the privation of good and the experience of evil How subtle a Sophist is the Divell The Woman had beheld the Tree before with some curiosity but after the words of the Serpent she betooke her selfe to contemplate it with ardent desire of tasting it Her eyes mis-led her soul and believing that the beauty of that plant must needs produce births equall in goodnesse contracted in that all her complacencies and affections It is probable that the debt of obedience and loyalty which liveth in those soules that have vowed their genius to rebellion might administer to the Woman these conceits Woman curb thy vaine curiosity Thou shouldest yield obedience to that God which after he had conferred upon thee thy beeing hath also given thee the dominion over all things created It s ingratitude its impiety to controvert those commands which deny thee nothing but the fruit of a Plant. All the fruits in Paradice are permitted thee but only that of the Tree of the knowledg of good and evill If therfore all the others be perfect and you know the good why will you eate of this Apple to know the evill also Seek not to know that which is not fit for thee The knowledg of evill is not knowledge but ignorance Keep thy selfe from the things prohibited that thou lose not those that be allready granted That Plant which thou beholdest with so much curiosity and with so much complacency compriseth in its fruit together with thy death the perdition of all mankind To what end doe you look upon a thing which cannot be tasted without offending God The hands commonly follow the delight of the eyes It s true thou art not forbidden the sight but the tasting of this Tree Yet neverthelesse though the beholding it be no sinne yet it is the beginning of sinne it is the occasion of Sinne. Give no credit to those promises which that they are deceitfull it sufficeth to know they are the promises of a Serpent the most sagacious of all beasts With giving thee an Apple he would rob thee of Paradise He treates thee with simplicity to take thee with Apples But inspirations avail not in a soule that suffers it selfe to be transported by promises and he cannot but sin who fixeth his eyes with immoderate delight on sinne The Woman tooke the Apple and with a disobedience so much the more inexcusable by how much the more unjust gathers it and makes it serve for food The woman had sinned with Sloth Lying and Gluttony whereupon she would Seal so many evills with the violation of the law of God because when praevarication begins in a soul there 's no end of sinning Shee called not Adam to eat of the Apple before her as was the duty of her subjection because believing divinitie to be reposed in that fruit she would not admit any to have the precedence of her In summe Self-interest destroyeth all the lawes of the will and of nature The woman having essayed the dulcity of the fruit and absolutely obliged her credulity to the lyes of the Serpent
whilst she found in some measure made good his promise in securing her from death she gathered one of those Apples and ranne with much hast in quest of Adam The love she bore him made her impatient to communicate to him so many benefits Scarce did she see him but she makeing her laughter and looks accompany her language said unto him Sir see here an argument of the love I bear you They know not how to love that know not how to give and gratify And by how much the greater are the gratuities by so much the greater is the affection I bring thee in this Apple the Divinity that God denyed us because the Great desire no equals in their Grandure This is the fruit of the forbidden tree which for sweetnesse dulcity ravisheth the applause of perfection from all the others The punishment that was prescribed us in tasting it is not to be feared for I have eaten and am alive Adam interrupted her and vesting his countenance with somwhat of severitie said Deare Companion Content your selfe with having your selfe alone transgrest the commands of God's law Desire not company in evill Lead not others into your precipices I am your companion I am your Lover but will know how to be your Enemy if you will not take your laws from my will What can we promise our selves from her that knows not so much as how to obey her God What may we not question in the vanity of your affections whilst you rebell from the obedience of him that hath created you I love you as much as your beauty merits and asmuch as a human heart can and knows how to do but I ought not to like nor adulate your errours He that punisheth not faults approveth them and they deserve greater chastisment who assent to the sinnes of others than they which sinne The only answer the woman gave to these reprehensions was sighs and teares the wonted artifices with which women betray the honour liberty and safety of men Casting therfore her armes about the neck of Adam she so besieged his constancy with her glances caresses and kisses that after some small resistance he yeilded himselfe overcome What cannot women do in an amorous soule What fortitude will not she conquer what constancy will not she subdue what Will will not she pervert what impossibility will not she effect He that loving is able to resist the violences of a Woman is either a God or hath the power of a God Adam knew very well that the eating of the Apple was a particular offence against God but either seeing that the woman was not dead and therfore that the punishment assigned by God for the disobedience was made for terror or perswading himselfe the divine justice was lesse severe in a matter of so small importance or else imagining to excuse and justifie his error by shewing that he had don it to gratify the companion that he had received from his Divine Majesty he took the Apple and began to tast it O wonderfull A woman did that which the Divell wanted courage to attempt Scarce had a small part of this fruit received Sepulcher in the throat when remorse the invisible companion of the greatest crimes with the sting of Conscience assailed the soule of Adam He perceiv'd suddenly together with his wife that they were naked whereas before covered with innocency they knew not the necessity of clothes Their eyes were opened not because they were blind before but because before they regarded not that nudity whilst lust had not ability to suscitate sensuall affects without the consent of Man Nor had yet the flesh to reprove their disobedience discovered its inclinarion property They poore wretches hitherto onely perceived themselves to be naked in that devoid of grace they observed their members to rebell against their wills Or else now they open their eyes since they know that which through their great desire of sinning they could not see They saw the trechery of the Divell the malignity of sinne and the vicinity of punishment When Man sins he is alwaies blind Now he sees that the sin consummate he remaines full of blushing remorse and confusion Now he seeth that conscience armed with zeale reprehends and condemnes him Nuditie before the fall wrought the same effect in Adam and his Wife that the discovery of the face and hands doth in us They were like to children who before they arrive to the use of reason care not to cover themselves When they come to the knowledge of good and evill and they injoy the fruition of free-will they blush at nakednesse That which befalls children in regard of age happened to them in regard of originall righteousnesse The woman perceived not herselfe after the sin to be naked but only after the fall of Adam either because the woman in satiating her disordinate appetite forgot her owne shame or to give us to understand that his Divine Majesty punisheth with greatest rigour not him that sins but him that makes others sin God would have it that our first parents were naked in Paradise because their clothing suited neither with nature nor art Not with nature because it agreed onely with Brutes as skinnes fethers and wool to resist the rigours of Winter or the ardors of Summer and man now partaker of every good commanded not obeyed the seasons Those vertues which might be produced by art brought along with them imployment and trouble and it was no reason that he that received felicity from God should think on labours and toyling Or God would have them naked to cloth them with the splendors of his grace to make them like the Angels which are so covered with light that they leave to the eye nothing but confusion and astonishment Sin stole this blesing out of the hands of God Adam agitated by the feare of Gods indignation thinking perhaps to cover his sin clothed his obscene parts with Figg-leaves Oh effects of sinne that depraves the reason and obfuscates the understanding Scarce had Adam sinned but he became ignorant desiring to cover that which cannot be hid And who knowes but that seeing himselfe naked he would out of excesse of envy dispoil the Trees also He used Fig leaves either because the Fig tree being of the nature of Laurell to preserve from thunder he thought perhaps to escape the stroak of divine vengeance Or else the root of the Fig-tree having a power to cleave marble he flattered himselfe with a conceit of being able to break the hardnesse of Gods wrath His Divine Majesty in the mean while walked into Paradise receiving those Zephyries that grow strong in the declension of the day to show that mans sinne disquieted him and that to asswage the heat of his just indignation he went fanning the gales now that they became greater and were more temperate Or to teach us that when God will punish sinne he doth not runne but walke and delights that all things should hinder him Adam