There is a special fitness in the fact, long since known and now to be perceived probable, that if mankind should fail in disobedience, it should rather be through the woman than through the man.  Because, the man, qua man, and the deputed head of all inferior creatures, was nearer to his Creator, than the woman; who, qua woman, proceeded out of man.  She was, so to speak, one step further from God, ab origine, than man was; therefore, more liable to err and fall away.  To my own mind, I confess, it appears that nothing is more anteriorly probable than the plain, scriptural story of Adam and Eve:  so simple that the child delights in it; so deep that the philosopher lingers there with an equal, but more reasonable joy.

For, let us now come to the probabilities of a temptation; and a fall; and what temptation; and how ordered.

The heavenly intelligences beheld the model-man and model-woman, rational beings, and in all points “very good.”  The Adversary panted for the fray, demanding some test of the obedience of this new, favourite race.  And the Lord God was willing that the great controversy, which he fore-knew, and for wise purposes allowed, should immediately commence.  Where was the use of a delay?  If you will reply, To give time to strengthen Adam’s moral powers:  I rejoin, he was made with more than enough of strength infused against any temptation not entering by the portal of his will:  and against the open door of will neither time nor habits can avail.  Moreover, the trial was to be exceedingly simple; no difficult abstinence, for man might freely eat of every thing but one; no natural passion tempted; no exertion of intelligence requisite.  Adam lived in a garden; and his Maker, for proof of reasonable obedience, provides the most easy and obvious test of it—­do not eat that apple.  Was it, in reality, an improbable test; an unsuitable one?  Was it not, rather, the likeliest in itself, and the fittest as addressed to the new-born, rational animal, which imagination could invent, or an amiable fore-knowledge of all things could desire?  Had it been to climb some arduous height without looking back, or on no account to gaze upon the sun, how much less apt and easy of obedience!  Thus much for the test.

Now, as to the temptation and its ordering.  A creature, to be tempted fairly, must be tempted by another equal or lower creature; and through the senses.  If mere spirit strives with spirit, plus matter, the strife is unequal:  the latter is clogged; he has to fight in the net of Retiarius.  But if both are netted, if both are spirit plus matter, (that is, material creatures,) there is no unfairness.  Therefore, it would seem reasonable that the Adversary in person should descend from his mere spirituality into some tangible and humbled form.  This could not well be man’s, nor the semblance of man’s:  for the first pair would well know that they were all mankind:  and, if the Lord God himself was