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Untitled Article
with a little pamphlet from whence I had the hint of it . This example of Adam ' s attempt to exempt himself from dependence on and subjection to God , and to make himself like God , pursuing the dictates of his own will only , hath been but too universally and fatally copied by his posterity . But though trials or temptations should be allowed necessary , not only to prove but even to acquire habits of subjection and obedience to the Divine fovernment ; and that it might be a very proper condescension to the scanty nowledge and want of experience in the parents of the human race , that so
simple and easy a thing , as abstaining from one particular tree in the garden , was made the matter of their first trial ; yet doth it not seem very strange and unaccountable that a serpent should become the agent or instrument of suggesting the transgression ? I answer , that this also appears to me to have been directed by the same wisdom and goodness . The temptation was not allowed to be suggested by a voice proceeding from an invisible agent , nor from a visible , glorious and angelic form ; for this would have carried in it an appearance of oivine authority , and thereby confounded and perplexed understandings which had not been used to discover delusions where appearances
seemed similar ; but it was permitted to come only from one of those creatures which had a little before been subjected to their dominion , as being much inferior in nature and dignity to themselves , * neither from any of the more noble and generous of the inferior animals , but from one of the meaner of them , and therefore the least reflection would have immediately apprised them , that the suggestion of such a creature ought not to stand in any compepetition with the command of their Author and Supreme Benefactor . But ,
alas ! like their children , they did not reflect . But it may be asked , Whence came it , that Eve was not surprised , or even terrified , at hearing a serpent speak articulately and rationally ? But is it not our own experience only that propounded ! that question ? It seems to me much more natural to suppose , that when Adam and Eve , at their creation , found themselves endowed with understanding and speech , they would suppose every animal whom they beheld moving around them , was endowed with the same powers , and that they would wonder , when they afterwards learned , that they were destitute of them . However , it is to be observed , that Eve , to
whom the serpent spake , was not formed till after the inferior animals had passed in review , as it were , before Adam , and he had given them names by divine direction , and perhaps been instructed in their several natures and properties ; we may , therefore , reasonably suppose , that she had not yet been instructed in all these particulars , and , e . g . m the characters and qualities of the serpent . Possibly she might not have even seen him before . But how could a serpent speak and reason thus ? Not of himself , I own .
But you know , Sir , that not only divines have supposed , but the holy writers also seem to suggest , that he was actuated by another being . And doth not the latter part of the sentence pronounced on the serpent seem to imply it ? Because , if we understand it in the literal sense only , as foretelling the accidents which happen in the encounters between men and snakes , it seems much beneath the dignity of the occasion and speaker . I refer it to your superior acquaintance with ancient writers , whether there are not to be found in them traces of an ancient and obscure tradition , that in the first ages of the world the inferior animals had the use of speech ; and might not this be the ground on which the ancient fabulists built their beautiful and instructive
fictions ? Now whence could such a tradition arise ? I shall only add , that what greatly aggravated the folly and guilt of the first pair in thus irregularly aiming to acquire knowledge and perfection by the violation of an express command of their Creator , was , that from the first moment of their existence he had been hourly imparting knowledge to them , and advancing them by gradual improvements towards the perfection to which they so hastil y aspired . Happy had it been for all us , their descendants , if , admonished by their unhappy attempt to be as gods , knowing good and evil , we had been more grateful for and attentive to the divine instructions we have
Untitled Article
Correspondence between T . Amory , Esq ., and Rev . W . Turner . 93
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1827, page 93, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1793/page/13/
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