And yet the human reasoners even of our day dare to affirm that the original properties of nature have remained essentially sound and whole, even in devils. But if the serpent, which Satan had abused to effect the sin of the fall, bore such a punishment on account of that sin; that whereas before it was the most beautiful of all creatures, it now on a sudden crawled on the ground upon its belly and drew after it its viperous tail before the eyes of Adam, and thus all on a sudden became an object of hatred and of dread; how can we doubt that the same was the utterly changed case with the man, who was the very one who had committed the sin and had imbibed into his very nature the poison of Satan? As therefore the Egyptians beheld not without the greatest amazement the rod thrown down by Moses suddenly changed into a serpent, just so in paradise, immediately upon God's uttering this word of the curse, the serpent was changed from a form the most beautiful into an object the most disgusting and revolting. And to this same curse pertains that which God moreover said, "And dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life." The allegorists explain this, as meaning that Satan would render men given up to the love of earthly things one with himself by deceiving them. But as I have said, God is here speaking to the serpent as such and cursing the serpent, causing it to bear its punishment of the sin of the fall. For there are other beasts which also feed upon the earth, but the serpent eats the earth as its curse; that whereas before it had a certain peculiar gift of subtlety and of beauty, and of food also, which it enjoyed in common with man, it now bore as its punishment that the nature of its food was changed. It is the glory of sheep, of oxen and of other beasts, that they feed on herbs and even on the fruits of trees, and also that they produce various things useful for the food of man, such as butter, milk, their own flesh, etc. The serpent also possessed this glory of his feeding in common with the other beasts. But now he is cast out from this society, and as it were from this common table and common feasting on account of the sin of the fall, so that he is not permitted to feed upon even the most useless herb; nor on apples, or pears, or nuts, on which even the mice feed. These he dare not taste. He eats the crude earth only. These are not my words, but the words of Moses; and they teach us that the nature of the serpent is entirely changed and wholly different from what it originally was.