Church, against which that snake charmer, the apostle, sings his spell when he
Book II 99 worked in paradise and guarded what he had received, he wouldn't come to that deformed state ofmind which would lead him, when displeased with the flesh as with his nakedness, to put together worldly, carnal coverings of lies, like fig-leaves with which to make himself an apron. That after all is what these people do when they tell lies about Christ and declare that he also told lies. And the way they hide themselves from the face of God is by turning away from his truth to their own lies. As the apostle says, And they turn their ears indeed away from the truth, while they turn towardsfables themselves (2 Tm 4:4).
40. And indeed that serpent, to wit that error of the heretics which tempts the Church, against which that snake charmer, the apostle, sings his spell when he says: / am afraid thatjust as the serpent led Eve astray by his cunning, so your good sense too may be corrupted (2 Cor 11:3), so then that error crawls along on its bosom and belly, and eats earth. The only ones it takes in, you see, are either the proud, who arrogate to themselves a status that is not theirs, and readily come to believe that God most high and the human soul share one and the same nature, or else those tangled up in the desires of the flesh, who are only too happy to hear that whatever they do as they kick over the traces is not being done by them selves but by the race ofdarkness, or else finally the curious and inquisitive, who are worldly wise and enjoy the taste ofearthly things, and go looking for the spir itual with a fleshly eye.57
There will be enmity though between this error and the woman, and between its seed and the woman's seed, if she gives birth to children, even though with pain, and turns toward her man, so that he may lord it over her. That, you see, is when the truth can begin to dawn on us that there is not one part of us belonging to God as its author, and another belonging to the race of darkness, as these people say, but rather that both that in us which has the right to govern and that lower element which has to be governed come from God, as the apostle says: The man indeed ought not to veil his head, as he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man. For man is notfrom woman, but womanfrom man; infact the man was not createdfor the woman 's sake, but the womanfor the man 's. That is why the woman ought to have a veil overher head,for the sake of the angels. However, neither woman without man nor man without woman in the Lord; forjust as the woman was from the man, so is the man through the woman, while all things arefrom God (1 Cor 1 1:7-12).
57. See above, 1 7,26 for how the serpent's bosom represents the proud and its belly the lascivious; and xviii,27 and note 32 there, for the curious or inquisitive being signified by its eating earth.