fruit, and prevailed upon her husband to partake with herb.
Without inquiring how she prevailed with him, or what would have been the effect if she alone had fallen, let it suffice to know, that Adam transgressed in eating the forbidden fruit, and that this was the sin whereby he and all his posterity were ruined. That the offence may not be thought trivial, let us consider of what malignant qualities it was composed :
1. What pride!
[Our first parents were endowed with faculties unknown to any other creatures. While, in common with all the rest, they possessed a beautifully constructed frame of body, they had a rational soul also, which assimilated them to God; so that they were a connecting link between God and the brute creation, a kind of compound of both. Moreover, they were constituted lords of this lower world ; and all other creatures were subjected to their dominion. None was above them but God himself. But they chose to have no superior : they affected to be as gods. What daring presumption! What criminal ambition! It was time indeed that " their lofti- ness should be bowed down, and their haughtiness be made low."]
2. What unbelief !
[God had spoken with a perspicuity which could not admit of misconstruction, and an energy that precluded doubt. Yet they listen to the suggestions of a wicked fiend, and believe the lies of Satan in preference to Jehovah's word. Can any thing be conceived more insulting to the Majesty of heaven than this ? Can an offence be deemed light which offers such an indignity to the God of truth ?]
3. What ingratitude!
[What could God have done more for them than he had done ? What could they have, to augment their felicity ? And, if any restraint at all was to be laid upon them for the purpose of trying their fidelity and obedience, what smaller restraint could be conceived than the prohibition of one sin"-le tree amidst ten thousand? Was one tree too much for Him to reserve, who had created all the rest for their use?
b A variety of questions might be asked respecting different parts of this history ; but where God has not been pleased to inform us, we should be contented to be ignorant : and where no certainty can be attained, we judge it better to pass over matters in silence, than to launch out into the boundless and unprofitable regions of conjecture.