The schools dispute much and variously about the superior power, and the inferior power of reason. They hold, that Adam possessed the superior power of reason, and Eve the inferior. We will cast aside all such half-learned and scholastic arguments and seek the true meaning of the passage, which is as follows: In the first place the long-suffering of God is great. Therefore he does not punish sin immediately. If he did we should soon perish. This long-suffering of God Satan ever abuses. And it just suits his purpose that man should not immediately feel his sin. For because punishment is thus deferred, Satan fills the mind with security and unconcern. So that a man is not only kept blind to the fact that he has sinned, but is caused to take delight and to glory in his sins. All this we behold in the popes and the Papists. If they could see with their eyes and hearts the slaughter-house of conscience, yea, the perdition into which they bring men by their impious doctrine, they would without doubt change their doctrine. But now, Satan so dazzles their eyes as it were with his delusions, that they cannot perceive their own judgment and the wrath of God which hangs over them. Therefore in the very midst of these mighty sins, they live with the greatest security, even with gladness and rejoicing, displaying their magnificent triumphs as if they had performed the most noble achievements. This was exactly the case with Eve. By her disbelief she rushed from the Word into a lie. Therefore in the eyes of God, she was now dead. But as Satan still held under his power her heart and eyes, she not only did not see her death, but was gradually more and more inflamed with a longing for the fruit; and was positively delighted with this her idolatry and with her sin. Now if Eve had not departed from the Word, thus to look upon the fruit with a desire to taste it, it would have been to her an abhorrence. But having thus departed, she turns over the sin in her mind with gratification. Whereas had she before seen any other stretch forth the hand to touch this tree, she would have recoiled with horror. But now, she is impatient of delay. Sin has burst forth from her heart, and has descended to the lower members of her body, her mouth and tongue. This desire and delightful longing therefore to eat the fruit are as it were the diseases gendered by the sin of her heart from which death follows; though Eve, while sinning, feels it not. This is plain from the next portion of the context. PART II. THE AWFUL FALL BY SINNING. V. 6. _And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat._