Human reasoners dispute also concerning the nature of this temptation, as to what it really was; whether our first parents sinned by idolatry or by pride or by self-security or simply by eating the fruit. But if we consider these things a little more carefully, as we ought to do, we shall find that this temptation was the most awful and the most bitter of all temptations. Because the serpent attacked the good will of God itself, and endeavored to prove by this very prohibition from the tree of life that the will of God toward man was not good. The serpent therefore attacks the image of God itself. He assails those highest and most perfect powers, which in the newly-created nature of Adam and Eve were as yet uncorrupted. He aims at overturning that highest worship of God, which God himself had just ordained. In vain therefore do we dispute about this sin or that. For Eve is enticed unto all sins at once, when she is thus enticed to act contrary to the Word and the will of God. Moses therefore speaks here most considerately, when he uses the expression, "And the serpent said." Here, WORD attacks _word_. The WORD which the Lord had spoken to Adam was, "Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat." This Word was to Adam the Gospel, and the law thus given was his worship. It was a service and an obedience which in this state of innocence Adam was able to render unto God. These are the Divine things Satan attacks. These are the things he aims at overturning. Nor does he merely intend, as those think who know nothing of the matter, to point out the tree to Eve and to invite her to pluck the fruit. He does indeed point to the tree, but he does something far worse than this. He adds another and a new word, as it is his practice to do at the present day in the Church. For wherever the Gospel is purely preached, there men have a sure rule for their faith, and by that they are able to guard against idolatry. But there Satan plies temptations of every kind, and he tries by what means he can the most effectually to draw men away from the Word, or how he can most completely corrupt the Word itself. Thus in the Greek Church also, in the time of the apostles, heresies of every kind were stirred up. One heretic denies that Christ is the Son of God. Another denies that he is the Son of Mary, just as the anabaptists of our day impiously deny that Christ assumed anything of the flesh of Mary. So again in the times of Basil more particularly, men attempted to deny that the Holy Ghost is God.