"Sometimes _necessity_ inspires the design of acquiring by unlawful methods, a supply which nature has rendered requisite, and which cannot be legitimately obtained. But, what could be wanting to satisfy the insatiable cravings of this woman? What could she need as an addition to her happiness? She might be said to be 'crowned with glory and honour;' she had dominion over the works of the Creator; all things were put under her feet; all sheep and oxen; yea, and the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. Even her love of variety could not yet be satiated, and this garden offered a thousand exquisite fruits which she had never tasted. "Sometimes _doubt_ blends itself with disobedience. There are but few sins totally unaccompanied with unbelief; some clouds always obscure our faith; some veils of concealment overspread the existence of the Creator. Among the previous pangs which sin occasions, when we deliberate respecting the commission of it, there always exist certain vague ideas in the mind, such as these--perhaps no superior being concerns himself about it; or, perhaps no one has forbidden it;--but Eve could not possibly doubt of the existence or the will of the Creator. She had herself heard this language from his mouth, 'In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shall surely die.' "Sometimes our abuse of a favour proceeds from _false ideas of its origin_. Though every sinner be ungrateful, yet every sinner is not a monster of ingratitude. The first cause of our felicity is sometimes mingled with the second, which is serviceable in procuring it. Our industry frequently seems to share with Providence the glory of our condition, and the nature of a blessing sometimes leads us to forget the acknowledgments due to our benefactor; but Eve enjoyed no good which did not in some respect proceed _immediately_ from the bounty of God, and which ought not to have induced her to glorify him. "Sometimes a _pure motive_ produces an _impure action_, and the love of virtue itself sometimes occasions our removal from it; but in the present case the action is aggravated by the motive. Pride, vain-glory, perhaps the desire of robbing God of his pre-eminence, his omniscience, or his jurisdiction over the creature, his most sacred and incommunicable distinctions, were the dispositions that actuated this woman. "Can any imaginable pretext serve to palliate so atrocious a crime, or excuse the woman who first committed it, and the man who joined in the rebellion? Would they indeed have been less criminal, if a seraph of glory had proposed to them the impious deed? Was not the faculty of _reason_ which they had received from God, sufficient to make them understand what revelation has taught us, that if an angel from heaven were to proclaim any thing contrary to what God has commanded, it ought to inspire us with no other sentiments than those of _anathema_ and execration?" [7]