EXAMPLES OF SENSUAL REASONINGS. 131 consult the inner dictate The sensual man says, its propensities, and not God, if there be such a things of time and sense. It does not and superior suggestions of the mind. "This is my nature, why should I resist enjoy the pleasures which they promise? being, must have given them to me, and certainly I cannot sin against him when I use them." These deceptive reasonings, illustrate the serpent saying, "Ye shall not surely die." But how transparent is the subtlety of such suggestions. Although God has given to man a sensual nature, because he was to be a resident in a physical world, yet it was given in connection with superior powers, and was intended to be employed under the direction of a higher impulse than itself. Again, the serpent is reported to have said, "In the day that ye eat of the forbidden fruit, your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” To eat of the forbidden fruit is plainly to transgress a given law. The tree of knowledge is a divine gift, by which men are enabled to perceive the truths of faith: the fruit of this tree is the good of life. When men, from sensual persuasions, are led to think that any virtues they may possess are self-derived, they eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge: they believe their eyes are open, because they can see with approbation the delights of the world; and they conceive that they are as gods, knowing good and evil, because they think they guide themselves in the prudences of life: but these are fallacies, utterly destructive of all genuine faith in spiritual and celestial things! Look at the effects of such reasonings, as they are exhibited in merely worldly and sensually guided men. Who are so strongly persuaded as these, that their eyes have been opened by having abandoned the teachings of religion, and plunged into the fascinations of the world? “They think that as gods they are wise, knowing good and evil, because they may be capable of distinguishing between the pains and pleasures of sense; and yet who, in reality, are as blind as they, to all the knowledges which relate to spirituality, futurity, and heaven? They do not acknowledge an eternal life, for they believe that when they die, they end: neither do they acknowledge the Lord, but worship only themselves and nature. Those amongst them who wish to be guarded in their expressions, say that there is a Supreme Being, of whose nature they are ignorant, and who rules over all. These are the principles, in which they confirm themselves, by numerous sensual and scientific arguments, and if they dared, they would openly proclaim these views before all mankind. Such persons, although they desire to be regarded as gods, or as the wisest of beings, would, if they were asked what it was not to love themselves, reply that it was the same thing as to have no existence. The idea of living from the Lord, they conceive to be a mere phantasy; and if interrogated as to their knowledge of conscience, they would say, it is a mere creation of the imagination, which may be serviceable in keeping the vulgar under restraint: if interrogated as to their knowledges of perception, they would laugh at your question, and call it enthusiastic. Such is their wisdom, such open eyes they have, and such gods they are: on these principles, which they imagine clearer than the day, they ground all their reasonings and conclusions concerning the mysteries of faith, and what can be the result but an abyss of darkness! These are the serpents, above all others, who seduced the world." (Arcana Cœlestia, 206.) And this principle, having gained successive dominion over Adam, caused his fall. It may be questioned, whether that generation of the Adamic people, with whom it commenced operations, descended into all the enormities contemplated in the above extract, though there can be no doubt of its having been fearfully realized in their posterity before the flood. CHAPTER XI. THE EATING OF THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT AND EXPULSION FROM EDEN. "'Twas man himself Brought Death into the world: and man himself Gave keenness to his darts, quickened his pace, Dr. PORTEUS, Bishop of London. FROM the considerations which have been adduced, we learn that the people, treated of under the collective name of Adam, were distinguished by a variety of principles, the whole of which, during their integrity, existed in order and operated for happiness. The sensual principle was among the lowest of this variety; the circumstance of its existing upon the outermost range of the mind, and, as it were, dwelling so close upon the world, is the reason why it is described as being more subtle than any beast of the field. Hence it was seen, that the tendency of this principle was outwards and downwards, in like manner as the desires of the higher principles were inwards and upwards, and that man, by the THE EATING OF THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT, ETC. 133 freedom of his nature, was capable of giving ascendancy to either, by cultivating one in preference to the other; and that the success of the serpent's temptation, consisted in man's sensual nature favoring the excitement induced upon it from without. It has, also, been intimated that this catastrophe was not a sudden, but successive work; that it began by inducing inclination to prefer the outer pleasures of the world, to the inward delights of heavenly things; then by insinuating doubts as to the existence of things spiritual, because they could not be seen or handled by the physical senses: next, by suggesting that natural things might be the only realities, because they only came under the cognizance of the eye and touch; and, at length, by producing the consent of the inner powers to the indulgences of sensual love. Such, we conceive, to have been the general process of the temptation and the transgression finally induced. The period which was occupied in this decline and fall, is not announced. Still there can be no reasonable doubt that it was the work of several generations. It is the existence of the fact, rather than the period occupied in its production, which it is of importance to know. Having these general views of the superior state of man, and the way of his decline and fall, before us; we can now proceed to investigate the nature of the law, he is stated to have broken by that transaction. It is thus written: "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." (Gen. ii. 16, 17.) The manner in which it was transgressed, though cited in the preceding chapter, for the sake of having the whole transaction then before us, was not there explained: for this purpose it is now again produced. "When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her husband, and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. Therefore the Lord sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground, from whence he was taken." (Gen. iii. 6, 7–23.) Eating is the act forbidden, and we think it much more natural to regard it, as the interdiction of some irregular process of the mind, than as the prohibition of a particular act of the body. If a physical act were intended by the prescription, surely, we may fairly ask why the tree was placed in the garden? Why it should have appeared so good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise; if, after all, it was not to be tasted? The common answer to these inquiries is, that it was planted in the garden with a prohibitory law, to test the fidelity of the parties who beheld it. But who does not perceive, that this idea makes the tree a stumbling-block, and God the tempter, for having put it there.* It plainly represents the tree as a temptation, and supposes God not to have foreseen its consequences. Surely, the Lord does not try the constancy of his people, by giving them a law to observe upon the one hand, and then, upon the other, to place in their way a temptation to transgress it. The supposition is shocking, and should be avoided. The whole notion about God trying the fidelity of his people, by placing them in difficult circumstances, requires revision. It is an apparent, and not a genuine truth. God is essential goodness, and he has always watched over the welfare and happiness of men, with the utmost care: he would have removed the fruit out of Adam's reach, and hindered the serpent from persuading him to eat it, if they had been things extraneous to his nature. But they were not: they were things which belonged to him as a man, and to have removed them, would have been to have taken away his manhood. This sensual principle was necessary to complete his nature, and fit him for residing in the world: the knowledge of good and evil, was necessary to encourage him in the way of obedience, and to act as a hindrance to his transgression. Freedom was indispensable to employ those knowledges agreeably to his own choice. How could a man be man, without a sensual principle! How little would man have been distinguished from the brute, if he had been deprived of the knowledge of good and evil! and without freedom, he would have been a mere creature of impulsive instinct. But Adam was endowed with all those excellences. He possessed knowledge of the highest kind. He was in the life of obedience, and so in the knowledge of good; thence, he would have a perception of its opposite, and so acquire the knowledge of evil. This was a tree distinguished among the other intelligences *Byron, in his terrible poem, "Cain," makes him say, in reference to the temptation of Adam: — "The tree was planted, and not for him? If not, why place him near it, where it grew, SIGNIFICATION OF EATING. 135 of his intellectual garden. It was an enlarged possession of genuine knowledge, proper to his high condition. But he was not to eat thereof. Eating was the prohibited act. Why was this, when he was so freely permitted to eat of every other tree? We shall find the answer to this interrogatory, if we consider the signification of the term. That it does not mean natural eating is evident, because taste is the chief species of knowledge which it is capable of inducing, and that is among the lowest class. The notion of the fruit having possessed some property, that was capable of exciting the mind to greater action, and so to procure additional knowledge, we think to be unworthy of a serious thought. Stimulants will inflame the imagination, but they do not increase the knowledge! They may excite and disorder it, but they cannot increase and strengthen it. Surely, knowledges, superior to those which Adam in his integrity possessed, were not to be procured by the eating of some peculiar fruit! If so, Adam could not have been so wise as is supposed, because there were certain knowledges withheld from him, and which the fruit of some remarkable tree was capable of furnishing. But what dreams are these! (See pp. 80, 81.) Eating is a term of frequent occurrence in the Scriptures, and, in the really historical portion of them, it literally denotes what it expresses; but there are many occasions on which the word is used without such meaning; yet in every instance it has an internal sense. We select the following examples. The Lord said, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever." "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." "He that eateth me, even he shall live by me.” (John vi. 51, 54, 57.) In these sentences, it is plain, that by eating is not meant eating, but that internal act of the mind, by which it appropriates, in an orderly way, the good things of religion, and thereby acquires spiritual nutrition for the sustenance of the soul. It was for the same reason that the Lord said by the prophet, "Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness." (Isaiah lv. 2.) The Lord also said, "to him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God:" (Rev. ii. 7:) where, by the tree of life, is meant the perception of love; for love is a fruit-bearing principle with men; and this is said to be in the midst of the paradise of God, when it is made the centre of |