This is the satanic rhetoric adopted by the tempter to prostrate utterly a poor weak woman; when he sees her turning away from God and inclined to listen to another teacher. Before, when he said in his satanic insidiousness, "Hath God, indeed, thus commanded you?" he did not positively deny the Word. He only attempted by speaking in the form of a question to draw Eve aside into doubting. But now, having fully accomplished his first point, he begins with daring presumption to deny the Word of God altogether, and to charge God himself with falsehood and cruelty. He is not now content with having caused Eve to add her expression, "perchance." Out of the "perchance," he now makes a plain and positive denial: "Ye shall not surely die." We here witness therefore what a horrible thing it is when Satan once begins to tempt a man. For then ruin causes ruin and that which was at first apparently a trifling offense against God, ends eventually in a mighty destruction. It was an awful step into sin for Eve to turn from God and his Word and to lend her ears to Satan. But this her next step is more awful; for she now agrees with Satan, while he charges God with falsehood, and as it were smites him in the face. Eve therefore now is no longer the woman merely turned away from God, as in the first stage of her temptation. She now begins to join Satan in his contempt of God and in his denial of the truth of his Word. She now believes the father of lies, directly contrary to the Word of God. Let these things therefore be to us a solemn lesson and a terrible proof, to teach us what man is! For if these things occurred in nature, while it was yet in its state of perfection, what shall we think may become of us! We have proofs, even now, before our eyes. Many, who at the commencement of our course gave thanks with us unto God for his revealed Word, are not only fallen away from it, but are become our bitterest adversaries!