The tempter, in making a second attack, became more positive. In contradiction to the divine assurance, he affirmed, with unhesitating effrontery, that they should _not_ die, even though they tasted the fruit of the interdicted tree; but on the contrary, that they should be "as gods, knowing good and evil." By the very same representations do the ministers of satanic malice in every age seduce mankind, suggesting that the commands of Heaven are extremely rigid, and flattering them that sin may be committed with impunity. The fatal moment was come--she _looked_ at _the tree!_--Ah! thou mother of all living! hadst thou looked at the _command_, and turned away from the attractive plant and the beguiling serpent, all would have been well--thine innocence had been uncorrupted, thy posterity uncondemned! But unhallowed curiosity prompted the fatal experiment--she wished to be wise-- "Her rash hand in evil hour, Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate. Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat, Sighing through all her works, gave signs of wo, That all was lost!" It does not appear that any ill consequences resulted _immediately_ from the criminal rashness of this sinner, so that she was encouraged to go to her husband, who, seduced by a fairer tempter, and one endeared to him by the tenderest ties, complied with her request to share the violated tree. Motives of curiosity and pride excited _her_ to sin, and so far as appears from the history, blind affection influenced _him_. Alas! she who was given him as a "_help meet_," is changed into his _seducer_, and from his _comfort_ is become his _snare_! That influence which she naturally possessed over her husband, ought to have been exerted to _prevent_ his compliance with any sinful intimation, in case of an unexpected solicitation, instead of which it was used to _induce_ him to plunge into guilt and ruin. "We have a right to presume," observes Saurin, "that as no crime was ever connected with more melancholy results, so none was ever more atrocious than hers. The more we examine its nature, the more base it appears, and the more easy is it to exculpate religion from those reproaches which this statement has so often occasioned. Whatever tends to extenuate the guilt of other sins, is an aggravation of this. "Sometimes a confusion _of the passions_ obscures all the powers of the soul; a man who sins in this manner, is frequently less deserving of abhorrence than of pity; he acts from a sort of compulsion, and protests against the crime, even at the moment he is committing it. Eve possessed a dominion over those passions to which we are become enslaved; she could easily calm their turbulence, and they had no other influence over her, than what was on her own part voluntary.