The worship of the serpent traced throughout the world, and its tradition referred to the events in Paradise: proving the temptation and fall of man by the instrumentality of a serpent tempter / [John Bathurst Deane].

  • John Bathurst Deane
Date:
1830
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The worship of the serpent traced throughout the world, and its tradition referred to the events in Paradise: proving the temptation and fall of man by the instrumentality of a serpent tempter / [John Bathurst Deane]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    phor under which the enemies of God and the wicked are described. These are represented under the image of “ a serpent ” * “a dragon ” f “ a leviathan, a crooked serpent,'X 5 expres- sions which are strong presumptive evidences of the intimate connexion between the serpent and the evil spirit. Though the circumstances of the seduc- tion and fall of man are objects of no diffi- culty to the faith of a Christian, yet it must be confessed that an obscurity surrounds them, which is not easily penetrable to the rash or unreflecting. Hence some have argued that the whole is allegorical, and others have pronounced the whole to be an invention: for a sceptical mind solves every difficulty by disbelief. Against either of these opinions I will endeavour to show, that the seduction of man by the agency of the serpent is no alle- gory; that the fall of man by eating of the forbidden tree is no allegory: that nothing could be more natural than that Adam and Eve should fall by such a simple act: and that no method of seduction could be so effective as the one employed by Satan. First then, let i ibid. * Isaiah xiv. 29. -j- xxvii. 1.
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