But should we premise, that, according to the history of Moses, it was in the power of the devil to assume a bodily shape, and that he did in very deed transform himself into the figure, likeness and organization of a snake, yet by and with that organ he could not have spoken or uttered the following articulate words, which Moses charged him with, to wit, "And the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die, for God doth know, that in the day ye eat thereof, that your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as Gods knowing good and evil." Who speaks the truth in the above passages, the devil, for neither the man nor the woman died for many years after they are said to have eaten of the forbidden fruit, for death is the annihilation of life, and they did not die on the day they eat. As the serpent is by nature incapable of speech, it must have put the devil into the same predicament; admitting that he transformed himself into the same figure or likeness, and consequently for want of the proper and adequate organs of speech, he must necessarily have been incapable of any other language than that of rattling his tail, and therefore could never have spoken those recited words unto Eve, or communicated any of his temptations unto her by language, while in that similitude. However, admitting that the first parents of mankind were beguiled by the wiles of the devil to transgress the divine law, yet of all transgressions it would have been the most trivial (considered under all the particular circumstances of it) that the mind of man can conceive of. Who in the exercise of reason can believe, that Adam and Eve by eating of such a spontaneous fruit could have incurred the eternal displeasure of God, as individuals? Or that the divine vindictive justice should extend to their unoffending offspring then unborn? And sentence the human progeny to the latest posterity to everlasting destruction? As chimerical as Moses's representation of the apostacy of man manifestly appears to be, yet it is the very basis, on which Christianity is founded, and is announced in the New Testament to be the very cause why Jesus Christ came into this world, "that he might destroy the works of the devil," and redeem fallen man, alias, the elect, from the condemnation of the apostacy; which leads me to the consideration of the doctrine of imputation. CHAPTER XI. SECTON I. IMPUTATION CANNOT CHANGE, ALIENATE OR TRANSFER... THE PERSONAL DEMERIT OF SIN; AND PERSONAL MERIT OF VIRTUE TO OTHERS, WHO WERE NOT ACTIVE THEREIN, ALTHOUGH THIS DOCTRINE SUPPOSES AN ALIENATION THEREOF