Satan however did not even then cease from his cruelty, hatred and enmity against the Seed of the woman. While he lay in the cradle Satan sought him out by the instrumentality of Herod. So that the new-born Christ was compelled to live among the Gentiles in Egypt. After this also, Satan adopted and tried all possible means to destroy him, until finding him and seizing him, he threw him into the hands of the Jews and nailed him to the cross. No! nor could his inexhaustible hatred be satisfied even then. He feared him even as he lay in the tomb, so desperate was the enmity which was "put" between him and the Son of God! Nay, even now, when Satan sees the Seed of the woman sitting at the right hand of God, and, according to the old proverb, "out of gun-shot," he vents his fury in every possible way against his Church and the poor helpless members of his body. Of all these sufferings and perils the clauses of the divine passage now before us were prophecies. From these same words nevertheless, in meditating upon which we ought to employ our whole souls, we derive a confidence in the Son of God, that he will bruise Satan utterly. But to return to the text. This promise, as I have already said, is at the same time most clear and yet most obscure. For since God, as I have also observed, here uses the expression, "The seed of the woman" generally, he does it that he might cause all women alike to be suspected by Satan, and that he might thus rack the serpent with perpetual suspense and dread. The expression therefore is a wonderful _synecdoche_, "condensation of instruction." It bears a general reference to all individual women, and yet contains a direct reference to one individual woman only, to Mary and to her Seed, who was to become a mother without any intercourse with the male sex. For God, I repeat, thus willed all women to be suspected by Satan, while on the other hand he willed that a most sure hope should be left to the godly, which should lead them to expect this salvation from all parents until in the fullness of time the true mother should be revealed. As therefore the first clause of the passage, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman," refers to all women in general; so this second clause, "her Seed" refers, with a special individually, if I may so express myself, to that seed which should be born of Mary, of the tribe of Judah, who was espoused unto Joseph.