First of all then let us settle it as a fact that the serpent here spoken of by God was a natural and real serpent, but a serpent besieged and occupied by Satan, who spoke through and by that serpent. Let us next consider it to be a truth, that those things which God spoke to the serpent are not to be understood as having been spoken to the serpent abstractedly as a brute animal, but that the person immediately spoken to was Satan, to whom God was all the while more expressly speaking. By this manner of interpretation, I am sure that I retain the plain and simple historical and literal meaning, and a meaning in accordance with the whole passage; by which meaning, as divinely intended, the serpent remains a serpent though occupied and possessed by Satan, the woman remains a woman, and Adam remains Adam, all which is proved by what follows in the sacred narrative. For it is not an inferior power of reason and a superior power of reason, who begat Cain and Abel, as recorded in the following chapter, but Adam and Eve, that is, the first parents of mankind, who fell by sin into death and became subject to the dominion of Satan. When therefore God says to the serpent, "Thou art cursed above all cattle and above every beast of the field, upon thy belly shalt thou go," the divine meaning is not that which Augustine gives, and which his disciples follow. They understand that by "belly" is to be allegorically understood pride. But the divine mind in the passage is, that as Satan abused the serpent in effecting the sin of the fall, so the serpent is compelled of God to bear a part of the punishment of that sin and therefore is thus cursed above all cattle, that it might be the most hateful of all the beasts of the field. At the beginning of the creation it was not so; but now through the divine curse, such a nature has been imparted to the serpent, that the creature which before the curse was the most delightful and the sweetest of all creatures, is now hated and dreaded above every other animal of the creation. Hence we find by experience that we have a natural abhorrence of serpents, and that serpents as naturally dread and flee from us. Thus the serpent is indeed made to bear this curse as part of the punishment of sin. These words however are not spoken unto the serpent only, God is dealing all the time with Satan in the serpent. It is on Satan that this sentence is pronounced, as his final judgment. It is Satan that is here placed before God's tribunal.