Now, as to the temptation and its ordering. A creature, to be tempted
fairly, must be tempted by another equal or lower creature; and through
the senses. If mere spirit strives with spirit, plus matter, the strife
is unequal: the latter is clogged; he has to fight in the net of
Retiarius. But if both are netted, if both are spirit plus matter, (that
is, material creatures,) there is no unfairness. Therefore, it would
seem reasonable that the Adversary in person should descend from his
mere spirituality into some tangible and humbled form. This could not
well be man's, nor the semblance of man's: for the first pair would well
know that they were all mankind: and, if the Lord God himself was
accustomed to be seen of them as in a glorified humanity, it would be
manifestly a moral incongruity to invest the devil in a similar form. It
must, then, be the shape of some other creature; as a lion, or a lamb,
or--why not a serpent? Is there any improbability here? and not rather
as apt an avatar of the sinuous and wily rebel, the dangerous,
fascinating foe, as poetry at least, nay, as any sterner contrivance
could invent? The plain fact is, that Reason--given keenness--might have
guessed this also antecedently a likelihood.
A few words more on other details probable to the temptation. Wonderful
as it may seem to us with our present experience, in the case of the
first woman it would scarcely excite her astonishment to be accosted in
human phrase by one of the lower creatures; and in no other way could
the tempter reach her mind.
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