11. _Moses_ maketh no mention at all of the Serpents coming to _Evah_ about that business, nor of her departure after the action, nor of any one special property whereby she might be essentially discerned to be (indeed) a true natural Serpent, nor of any manner of amaze, or suddain fear in _Evah_ at her suddain approach and extraordinary speech: whereas yet _Moses_ himself was afterwards horribly afraid at the only sight of a Serpent. And where it is said, _Thou art cursed above all the beasts in the field_; there the very bruit beasts (to the horrible confusion of Satan) are preferred before him; not in absolute power, but in an especial regard of that happy continuance and timely conservation of their original nature. For, the beasts of the field, they do not forgo any heavenly happiness, which they never yet had: But they continue forth their course in that self same primary estate they took at the first. But Satan is accursed because he kept not his first estate, but fell from it, and therefore is worse than the beasts of the field. Neither is this way of expounding the Scriptures metaphorically, where the literal sense includeth an apparent absurdity, either singular or novel, for both Antients and Moderns have allowed the same course, for S. _Augustine_ saith: “When any thing is found in the Scriptures which cannot (without an absurdity) be possibly interpreted literally, That thing without doubt is spoken figuratively, and must receive some other signification, than the bare letter doth seem to import.” And _Gregory_ saith: “When the order of the History becometh defective of it self in the literal sense, then some mystical sense as it were with wide open doors doth offer it self: yea and that mystical sense must be received instead of the literal sense it self.” And therefore (saith _Peter Martyr_) “that malediction or curse which the Lord did cast on the Serpent, must be Allegorically understood of the Devil, and those things which seem properly to accord to the Serpent indeed, must metaphorically be transferred to Satan understood in the Serpent.” So then, by all the premises it is very apparent, that it was the Devil himself, and no natural Serpent, who set upon _Evah_ in that tentation, he being only metaphorically set forth by the name of a Serpent: And therefore had no need in that action essentially to assume to himself the Body of a natural Serpent, for the better accomplishment of the intended business. The next is to lay down positive Arguments to prove that the Devil did not essentially enter into the body of the Serpent and if he did, that yet neither he by himself, nor the Serpent, and he joyned, could thereby make any articulate sound or discourse. Which if the Devil in the Serpent be supposed (as it is) to perform any such matter, it must be either by considering him as an incorporeal or as a corporeal creature, but we affirm he could perform neither way, and that for these reasons. [Sidenote: _Reas. 1._]