punishments feares them to be much greater then they are A Hell to a soul that hath proved it shall be no greater nor more horrible To one that dreads it the torments and stripes represent themselves centuplicated Because saith God thou hast bent thy eare to the flatteries of thy wife touching and tasting the fruites of the forbidden Tree I will that thy labours curse the earth instead of cultivating it With the sudors of thy industry shalt thou spend thy days Thornes and thistles shall over-run thy feilds and like a bruit thou shalt be constrained to take herbes for thy sustentation Thou shalt not be able to eat without imploying thy hand or sweating thy brows These thy miseries shall determine with the ultimate period of thy life for I will for thy disobedience that thou returne to thy beginning and that earth become earth and dust dust How unexplicable is the mercy of God! Adam sinnes and transgresseth the precepts of his Divine Majesty and He in pronouncing the sentence of condemnation curseth the Earth What will not love make one doe What share had the earth in the faults of Adam With what demerit had it irritated the indignation of its Lord Unlesse perhaps it was cursed by God for that it did nor suddenly open a gulph to swallow him who had not known how to obey his Creator Or unlesse that God would have it cursed because it was always to serve the serpent for food It argues also the goodnesse of the Lord to remember Adam of the end of his miseryes whilst in minding him of his death he sets before him the period of his infelicity And although Death is the wages of sinne it proves notwithstanding profitable and necessary that so mans miserys and misfortunes become not immortall Mercifull God that blessest even when thou chastisest us Indeed death was a necessary act in the world that so the feare of losing the life should spur man on to all good actions and refraine him from all bad What would not man dare what would not man atempt to do if death should not cut the thread of his sensuality of his ambition How would he despise the death of the soul and his last damnation in the fall of the world that dying every moment should neverthelesse pride himselfe in a hope of immortallity It would not doubtlesse be the least of his rash attempts with the union of the mountaines to attempt a scalado upon Heaven Let the goodnesse of God therefore be for ever praised that to preserve the soul from perpetual damnation and to interrupt a lethargy of vices which would determine only with the termination of time hath decreed the dissolution of this masse of humane flesh and permitted that a momentary paine that is circumscribed by the brevity of a grone should deliver us from an eternall torment accompanyed with such dolours as the just anger of God is able to produce Scarce had the Soveraign Monarch pronounced the punishment for the sinne of Adam but making either by virtue of his Divine power or by meanes of the Angels certaine garments of beasts skins he therewith covered the nakednesse of Adam and Eve who stupifyed with Gods displeasure knew not so much as how with pardon to beg the mercy of his Divine Majesty This also is an argument of the wonderfull beneficence of God in that he would not permit that sinners thrust out of Paradise should for all that be wholly deprived of his providence as to the necessity of covering their bodies Because divine favours are of the nature of the Sunne which participates its heat and its light even to those that despise it God rendered the bodies of these wretches so miserable that without clothes they could not suffer the violences of the seasons nor cover that part of the body which is unworthy of the eye He would have these clothes of skins that so they might daily weare about them the emblematicall tokens of their mortality which being of slaughtered beasts should daily remember them of death and advert them that they dwelt under the intemperancy of a Heaven that would have dealt with them as with beasts And who knows but that God in vesting our first Parents with skins intended to describe what ought to be the habit of wise and just men condemning silkes and purples which denote onely effeminacy and pride Unlesse perhaps he would give us to understand how full of blindnesse are the counsells of men that have not recourse to God in their miseries since the vesture composed by Adam covered not all his nudity nor defended him from externall incommodityes and was inconvenient pricking the flesh and bringing paine and trouble Adam being clothed God began to upbraid him saying Behold Adam thy hopes obtained behold thy pretensions determined Thou art made just like Us omnipotent wise and all composed of goodnesse and holinesse Behold thou art become of a nature immortall not obliged to any needing of none and blessed in thy selfe Behold thy enjoyment of the knowledg of good and evill so much coveted by thy incredulity Get thee packing therefore out of the Paradise of delights and fixe thine aboad where thou wast formed cultivating that earth from whence thou hast derived thy beeing It was one of the wonted effects of Gods benignity to drive Adam out of Paradise because if he had continued amongst those delights without enioying them he would have received too much torment there being no greater punishment to be found then to be in the midst of felicityes and to be denyed the fruition Or he was dismissed from Paradice because What could God hope from him that had not power to shew himselfe continent no not with the very Trees More out of an effect of feare then disobedience it was that Adam stood immoveable when God by force took him from thence appointing him a station wherein he might command with the eye all the delights of Paradise that so daily beholding the losse of his happinesse his pennance should become more severe and his repentance more sincere It was goodnesse in God to thrust Adam out of Paradise for that he thereby removed the occasion of sinning anew there not being a greater incentive to a relapse into sinne then the being in the place where the sinne was before committed Those remembrances are no other then stimulations which enkindle the desire and hurry the will to new faults What Adams condition was expulsed Paradise many be easier imagined then described His eyes pregnant with teares his mouth full of sighs were the least expressions of his griefe His Wife insted of comforting him augmented his torments not so much for her haveing been the originall of his sinne as for the griefs which he received from her afflictions Poore Adam that didst not scarce one whole day enjoy the gifts of Gods favour His felicity being shorter then that of an Ephemeris About three of clock he was brought into the Garden at six a clock he sinned and in
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
much as those whom we most love Adam that refused not to be a companion in the sinne shunns to be a companion in the punishment His Divine Majesty though he saw Adams sin arrived to a supreme degree whilst to the exterior and interior consent and consuetude he addes also his excuse and apology and though the temerity of Adam retorted the crime on his Maker so that God seemed the Author of such a fault yet continuing in the exercise of his wonted Mercy he turned to the Woman and said Woman Chosen by me for a Companion and Comfort to Man why hast thou been the instrument of a sinne somuch the hainouser by how much the more unjust why hast thou deceived thy Husband Why hast thou not obeyed thy God The woman suffered not the words of His Divine Majesty to be ended but she replyes My simplicity Lord hath been deluded by the subtility of the Serpent He knew so wel how to dissemble his words that I believed he had neither wit or power to betray my credulity I could not perswade my self that there were treacheries in Paradise nor deceits in the face of a Damsell Thunder therefore O Lord thy punishments upon the Serpent as upon the author of all evill Guilt is a weight that superfluously aggravates every one Happy doth he think himself that to quit himselfe can accuse either the innocence or guilt of others God who had all this while been so full of patience and goodnesse in citing Adam in attending to his defence and in harkening to the excuse of the woman no sooner heares the Serpent to be the Author of so much evill but presently without hearing him he hastned to punish him O the wonderfull mercy of God that makes the punishment of all things precede mans punishment To Serpents that is to Divells he shewes not any mercy Hence we may argue that those who are men namely that prostitute not their reason to sense alwayes find God exceeding in new benefits The Serpents on the contrary namely those obstinate sinners which know not how to leave groveling in the dust of sinne receive their punishment before they be arraigned of their offence It admonisheth men to be men and to keep themselves men Because said God in cursing the Serpent thou hast been the Author of the breach of my precepts because rhou hast deceived Innocence because thou art opposite to the execution of my commands and desires and because thou hast been so bold as to be tampering with my image I wil make thee accursed among all the beasts of the earth Thou thy selfe shalt be a burden to thy selfe alwayes going upon thy belly Dust shall be the sustenance of thy life There shall be an antipathy between thee and the woman and enmity between her seed and thy seed The trechery of thy stingings shall be rewarded by her heel which by Crushing thy head shall take away thy Life In short the meanes of sinne become the instruments of punishment The serpent had lift up it self in tempting the woman and now God commanded him for ever after to creepe upon the earth With a thousand promises had he got the favour of the woman and now God condemnes him to a perpetuall enmity with her It s not to be doubted but that His Divine Majesty in the serpent understood also the divell but curst neverthelesse the Serpent only because he would not too much perplex the minds of Adam and the woman who as yet knew not that there was any other incorporeal spirits in the Terrestriall Paradise but only God himselfe and it s a divine Maxime not to offer new occasions to those who are apt to erre The Divell goes upon his brest and on his belly to advert us that he two wayes betrayes the state of innocence With Pride which is emblematically figured by the brest which is the seat of the heart and with Luxury which hath its residence in the belly Or it teacheth us that the irascibles being seated in the breast the concupiscibles in the belly he moveth mans affections with these to precipitate and hurry him into sinne He is condemned to eat the dust which is as much as to say those men onely who having consubstantiated themselves with terrene vices little differ from the earth or dust God to punish the Devill the more in cursing of him threatens him perpetuall enmity with the woman either because he knew her malice was implacable or to hint that he had overcome the woman with treachery and not with open warre After the maledictions of the Serpent God turnes to the Woman and saith And thou Woman for thy credulity for thy concupiscence and for having seduced others into thy sinne thy griefs and thy sorrows shall be multiplyed to thee according to the multiplicity of thy births With the bitternesse of those pangs which shall make thee desire death shalt thou give unto thy children life Thou shalt be always subject to the Man and he shall excercise over thee a perpetuall command It was with reason that three sins should receive three punishments Namely for overmuch credulity multiplicity of births for the pleasure of the palate the pangs of the belly and for the imperious and scandalous seducing the man obedience and servitude It seemes indeed a great felicity the multiplicity of children yet neverthelesse God intended by this multiplicity to curse the woman Because on many births attend many abortions many paines and many perills It is againe to contend with an impossibility that amongst many children there should not be some monstrous either in maners or else in wit or else in life the which is insupportable to the Parents Let us add that the number of children disquiets the affection and the desire of the Fathers either in their education or in their vices or in their misadventures In a word the more fruitfull the Woman is the lesse fortunate is she to be esteemed If haply with a contrary meaning we may not say that God intended by this sentence to curse the Woman obliging her to paines and to blesse her making her fruitfull to denote to us that God in the rigor of chastisments themselves is not forgetfull of the excesse of his Mercy The throws of childbirth are naturall to women but God in the state of innocency with admirable and supernaturall power would have eased her of the paine and anguish All is easy al is possible to the omnipotence of an Almighty God God came at last to pass Sentence upon Adam Perhaps the love he bore him was so ardent that he would make him the last that should prove the effects of his just anger Or he chastised him last because his sinne was greater then others that so he might receive greater terror and greater torment in beholding the punishment of the others The expectation of chastisement is haply a greater paine then the enduring of it He that is punished knowes the worst of his sufferings He that waites for
the Evening was expulsed In a word Humane felicities are no other then moments They for the most part find their Coffin in their Cradle and their death in their birth Whilst he was departing the Sunne retired to shroud himselfe in the Ocean as if externall darknesse should have seconded the spirituall of sinne An Angell increased the griefe and terrour of his sadnesse which armed with fire and sword kept the entrance into Paradice in that he saw himselfe wholly excluded from all hope who flattering his sorrow might be able to promise a returne to his lost delight In placing an Angell with fire and armes in his hands his Divine Majesty intended to impede the entrance of Men and Divells into Paradise And to teach us that to enter into Paradise we must passe through the fire and sword of penitence with the consent of the Angell which is Christ Or else represented to us an Hieroglyphick of Hel the sword signifying the paine of guilt and fire the paine of sense Adam not omitting his sighes and complaints gave the woman the name of Eve which signifies Life because she was to be the mother of all Living Or oppressed with his owne sorrow he would allude to the voice of infants which they make when they cry Shee being the cause of teares and through her all mankind having occasion of weeping Or else would call her Life because seeing nothing but emblemes of death he hoped to comfort himselfe with this name Or it may be haply that he did as men now a dayes who having death before their eyes speak of nothing but life He could not neverthelesse so abstaine through griefe but that the sense mis-led him with its allurements As often as he was incircled in the embraces of Eve who manifested her selfe an interessed companion in his misfortunes he received no small content And it 's probable that she some times served herselfe of such like sentiments as these It 's not necessary Adam because thou must repent that therefore thou must dispaire Let us not undervalue the mercy of that God who with so gentle a hand hath so favourably punished our enormous crimes by shewing more of cowardise then contrition in our tears Let not him sin that hath not courage to undergo chastisement And its true that the soule dissolved into teares though it should evaporate by the eyes would not be able to remove the misery of our losse and it is withall an effect of a great prudence to conforme ones selfe to those things which have no other remedy then sufferance Let 's indeavour to recover what we have lost by the procuring of children Sleight comforts in our infelicity but yet necessary because God hath commanded them Let 's sin no more in disobedience Replicated sinnes as they admit not of excuse so they provoke Mercy it selfe to anger Let us endeavour the procreation of mankind for so we shall conforme to the will of God If Death triumph over this masse of flesh we shal survive in dispight of him in our Children Nephews and the memory of our Progeny I intend not by all this that we should leave off our teares The sorrow for my sinne shall dye with my heart which I believe shall be the last part of me alive I speake it that we may not incense with a new transgression that God in offending whom I know not which is greater the danger or the impiety Adam with a smile begot by the stimulations of sensuallity thus replyed I need no longer now to feare your company my Eve since you become to mee an incentive to good To perswade me that I bemoan not the miseries into which sinne hath brought me is to desire me to assume the quality of flocks and stones I have lost too much ever to feare weeping It s an effect of stupidity and not of prudence not to accompany great losses with great greifes It is yet true that there is a necessity to cheare up the sense to propagate Nature and obey God Thus saying with glances and kisses haveing throwne his armes about his wive's necke they gave themselves wholly up to delight which peradventure for the time begot in them an oblivion of all the accidents past There is not any thing more estrangeth the soule from afflictions than the complacencies of sense In that act a man not only communicates himselfe transformes himselfe but goes out of if not besides himselfe Greifs give way torments vanish discontents are forgotten in those amorous games which admit of no other companions then laughter sport and audacity Till this instant Adam had been kept a Virgin to intimate unto us that Matrimony fills the earth but Virginity Paradise Scarce had Eve satisfied the instinct of nature and appeased in part the allurements of sense when with the signes of pregnancy she was assaulted by repentance the indivisible companion of fleshly delights Here I will not mention the extreams of her passions in loathing and longing for every thing in the burden of her belly in her vigils and in the acerbity of those pangs the more grievious by how much the more strange because the most that I can speak would be the least part of what they were Much lesse will I speak of the sufferance of Adam because it is known that to have a wife and a wife pregnant is a species of martyrdome In the end with all those payns that accompany the gravidnesse of women the time of delivery drew neere Adam playing at one time the parts of the Mid-wife Nurse and Husband Eve brought forth two births Caâ—n was the name of the male and Calamana that of the female Adam full of joy and with eyes big with teares betook himselfe to praise and returne thanks to his Divine Majesty Lord said he thy goodnesse be praised who not altered a jot by the injuries of my sinne hast condescended that I continue a man Mercifull God glorious God immense God since thou ceasest not to do good to those that offend thee I acknowledge that I merited grown odious to the aire earth and all creatures and lost amongst the clouds of oblivion to be made my owne sepulcher as not being able to imagine a viler place Thou on the contrary giving me a power of using all the elements vouchsafest me to be the father of mankind and permittest me to live ever famous to the memory of all Ages Lord I will not go about to commemorate all thy favours for they are infinite I beseech thee only to continue unto me the assistance of thy grace that so I may not fall into those sins which have made me to deserve death Eve afterwards bore Abel and Delbora whereby she increased the joy of Adam Children are doubtlesse the delight of their Parents the fathers seeing their lives renewed in their children whom they look upon as their other selves grown young Poore Adam had neverthelesse little cause of rejoycing whilst he saw borne more subjects of humane misery
assigning Adam for food the fruits of the earth intended not to teach us what our viands ought to be knowing very well that the cloudes of the aire nor the gulphs of the Sea are not secure from mans Gluttony After that sense in Adam had given place to reason and that delight had in a great measure seated and rebated the edge of his appetite the woman was adverted by Adam not to touch that Fruit which was so mortiferous in its effects to the eater Such saith he my Dear is the commandement of God The transgressing it would be ingratitude and impiety would ravish us of all these delights and our Empire over the Creation It is unworthy of the affection of great ones that know not how to part with their obedience and if obedience is necessary to all how much more doth it beseem us that have a God so prodigal of his bounties that he hath vouchsafed to us together with his image a part of his Divinity The Woman became at those prohibitions the more curious To forbid a woman is to increase her appetite He that denies the any thing adds a spurre to that desire which is ardent in all things but in things prohibited insatiable The Woman therfore transported by those impatiencies that interposed between them and their felicity left Adam desiring to injoy without testimonys and without check the sight of that fruit which being forbidden was to be supposed the more exquisite The Woman the more distant she is from her Husband the more adjacent she is to Sin and whilst alone is in perill of destroying herselfe because she gives incouragement opportunity to any one to tempt her A solitary Woman is exposed to the temptations even of Serpents The Moon is eclipsed by the vicinity of the Sunne The Woman on the contrary commonly finds her honesty eclipsed in the absence of her Husband Having found the tree she beheld the fruits with so-much curiosity that it induced the Devill to tempt her He that takes away opportunity from the Devill takes away his strength he can do litle harme to those that do not give him accesse Curiosity is the mother of sinne and daughter of disobedience Amongst the infinite forms of animals there was a Serpent with the face of a Damsel which God had replenished with all subtility In sagacitie and in craftinesse there was not that creature under Heaven that could match him This the Divell chose for the instrument of his wickednesse envying the felicity of Man because created after him and of a more ignoble substance he triumphed with the Dominion of the World and the possession of the favour of his Divine Majesty He served himselfe of a serpent that had the face of a Damsell to advertize us that trecheries alwaies maske themselves with the pretexts of simplicity and mansuetude Or because the Divell beleived himselfe unable to deceive a Woman if he did not make use of a mouth or face like that of a Woman The Devill would tempt the Woman and not the Man because he knew her more facil of beleife and more feeble of resistance He began from the inferiour part that so with order he might come to possesse himselfe of the whole He knew that men seldome give credit to promises and fall easilier by yelding to the errors of others than being deceived in their owne This enemy of Mankind first suffered the eyes of the Woman to convey to the heart the desire of tasting that forbidden Tree And then with a smile which nourished and confected the poyson he said unto her O fairest Woman the miraculous gift of Heaven to blesse the eyes of your beholder I doe for my part believe that this Garden can only so far boast the name of Paradise as it injoyes your presence which hath efficacy to imparadise not only the affections of all hearts but also the insensibility of all plants stones But be pleased to honour me with the solution of one doubt Why are you prohibited by God to taste of all the fruites of this Garden since they are prostituted to the desire even of the vilest animals and are so delicate that it sufficeth to say that they are of Paradise Did it not suffice God to have subjected you to the law of nature and moreover to have added the supernaturall without imposing the yoak of a positive law upon you to which the irrationall Brutes themselves are not obliged This God is too severe that prohibits you the very fruition of the Trees of the earth And too parsimonious in that he would reserve those fruits which were given by the seasons I compassionate your condition restrained within so narrow bounds that to observe them is of necessity to contend with impossibility How great is the malice of the Divell God had prohibited the fruite of one only Tree but he making the commands of God difficult by aggravating them demands why they were not forbidden all As if the greatnesse of precepts excused and warranted in some part their non-observance and disobedience The woman wondred not to heare a Serpent which articulated his voice and pronounced words either because she believed it a miracle of the Soveraigne power of God or because Women when they are once ravished by any appearance regard not the very impossibility of Nature herselfe She started not at the sight of a Serpent for seeing it resemble her selfe in countenance she rather rejoyced then feared it being naturall to joy in those things which resemble us Or else because in the primitive state of Innocence all creatures obeyed man and as they had not power nor poyson to offend so much lesse did they retaine any thing of terror to affright This was the will of God who would not permit that any greivance or annoy should occurre to man unlesse he was first provoked to it by sinne The Woman answered to the Divell The command of God is not so restrictive as thou sayest We may injoy all Trees at our election having a Dominion over all The fruit of this alone that is in the midst of the Garden is forbidden us God hath commanded us not to tast nor to touch this because perhaps it would subject us to death The fear of Death hath power to refrain all desires Nor am I such a fool to desire by a wicked transgression to provoke and irritate the wrath and judgements of God His Divine Majesty had commanded only that they shouid not eat of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evill but the Woman moreover addes the Touching it because as a Woman she could not discourse without aggravating or over-reaching Or it may bee she was thus advertised by Adam who knowing the frailty and weaknesse of his Wife would also remove the occasion for when sin gets into the hands it 's almost impossible but that it should at last to the mouth To touch with the hands the things forbidden to the mouth is either a voluntary meeting sin or