Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/23

Rh as a rational and free agent; in other words, he could not have been a man, but would have been a kind of automaton, an intellectual machine, or at best a dignified brute. While he thought, willed, and acted, in and according to the truth, notwithstanding the appearance, he remained in the order to which he was created: but as soon as ever he yielded to the appearance, and by reasonings from the senses confirmed himself therein, he then abused those faculties, with which he was endued, and by turning to himself departed from his Creator. Thus, instead of standing in the true order of his life, which consisted in the perpetual acknowledgment, that he was only a recipient of life from God, he erroneously confirmed himself in the appearance that such life was his own: and thus, by the abuse of his two faculties of rationality and liberty, he formed in himself the origin and beginning of evil.

All this is described in the Sacred Scripture in a way peculiar to the genius of the most ancient people. The language used for this purpose may be called parabolical, or, as the apostle Paul expresses it, allegorical: but in truth every word is significative of, and correspondent with, some specific matter of contemplation included in the general subject. In language of such a character the serpent, which deceived the woman, and through her the man, denotes the sensual principle, which by fallacious appearances, and plausible but false reasonings, flatters and seduces first of all the will or selfish propensity, represented by the woman, and afterwards the rational faculty itself, represented by the man. For the man, the woman, the serpent, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the garden of Eden itself, all represented and signified states of affection, thought, and life, in each individual member of the church, and