as the devil blasphemously alleged, whom the event proved a liar,
seems then to be doubting and unbelief of the threatening, (Gen. 3:4,6). Their faith as to the truth of the threatening being first foundered, their heart plied to the temptation; and then succeeded a lust after the forbidden fruit; and then the sin was completed by their actually eating it, as in the words of the text.
Satan, the old serpent, very artfully laid his train for enticing our first parents to eat this forbidden fruit. For he attacked the woman when alone, at a distance from her husband; he endeavored to make her doubt of the truth of the divine threatening; he presented the fatal object, as fruit pleasant to the eye, and to be desired to make one wise: he pretended a higher regard for them than their sovereign Creator, who, he tacitly insinuated, grudged their happiness: and he used means to persuade them, that they should be like God, in the vast extent of their knowledge, upon their eating the delectable morsel. Thus the eyes of their mind were first blemished by a mist from hell; which being admitted, gradually darkened their understanding, so that first doubting, and then disbelief of the threatening, ensued. Their will was easily conquered to a compliance with the temptation; then a corrupt affection to the tree seized them, discovering itself in a lustful looking at it: then the hand took it, and the mouth ate it, and the fatal morsel was swallowed.
II. I am next to show why this fruit was forbidden.
1. It was not because God grudged the happiness of our first parents, as the devil blasphemously alleged, whom the event proved a liar, (John 8:44). Nor yet,
2. Because there was any evil in the fruit itself; for that could not be; for we are told, (Gen. 1. ult.) that, at the close of the creation everything was very good. This fruit was not forbidden because it was evil, but it was evil because it was forbidden. It was forbidden for the