But what I thought myself most happy in, was a female companion, which God had given me as a helpmate, and that many might partake of the riches of his creation. I loved her exceedingly. She was, indeed, flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone, as I perceived immediately on seeing her. No life ever was, or ever will be, like ours in that garden; nothing but innocence, complacency, and love passed between us; without cares, jars, and vexations, and with affluence of every thing we could desire. Then how noble and glorious were the faculties and dispositions of our minds! When God approached us, what ecstacies of love and adoration swelled our hearts! We were strangers to falsity and deceit. No guilt or weakness troubled our quiet. We knew nothing of any evil being in the world. We lived purely on the good which God showered down upon us, for we had more communion with the divine good than we ourselves knew. As a child is never perfectly sensible of the fondness and affection of his father, till after forfeiting it; so we, after being turned out of that delightful Paradise, then, alas! too late, began to know the infinite good we had been possessed of, whilst in it.

Pilgrim. But, father, it seems strange that, after God had endued you with such wisdom and goodness, he should suffer you to be seduced from your Creator, to break through his holy injunction, and when so much depended on it.

Adam. Oh! son, there is no expressing what influence a woman has over a man, who has once set his love on her, especially when there is any appearance of reason on her side; and the wily serpent used such insidious language to her, as over-persuaded her to imagine we were laid under some unjust restraint, and that we should be great gainers by following his suggestions. In short, he brought my poor wife to believe, that we should be like God himself; and that his only design in forbidding us to eat of the tree, was to prevent our being so. Pilgrim, Accursed artifice!

Adam. This staggered her weak mind, and concurring with her strong desire of tasting the fruit, (as, to be sure, nothing could be more sightly than the tree), she yielded to the tempter and ate.

Pilgrim. Sad eating!

Adam. Then she came running to me with the flatteries with which the serpent had beguiled her; and I, blinded by love, and bewildered with despair at what she had done, yielded to her insinuations.-I followed her wretched example.

Pilgrim. What happened then?

Adam. Immediately our eyes were opened, and we perceived ourselves to be naked. Besides, every thing appeared quite altered; the little birds became shy; the beasts seemed to put on a kind of wildness; some, lowering, turned their backs on us; others; threatened us; great numbers withdrew from their obedience; so that we had but few left about us. The charming sun seemed also to hide its head; the weather began to grow cold; in short, both the elements and the creatures seemed to reproach our foolish and ungrateful disobedience towards so good a Creator.

Pilgrim. What a loss in so short a time!

Adam. These were the least parts of our misery; there is one thing----Oh!---

Pilgrim. I beseech you, father, restrain your grief, and relate to me what it is that so exceedingly affects

you.

Adam. Oh, that lovely look!

Pilgrim. Of your deluded wife?

Adam. No, no! the august, the glorious appearance of God, whom every morning we used to praise, who used to be all our solace and joy, now struck us with affright; and his voice, once the sweetest music to us, became terrifying as thunder.

Pilgrim. Woful change.

Adam. Oh, my son, never, never sin against your God, how alluring soever it may seem, or whatever appearance of reason it may wear; for, believe me, death is the consequence of sin; out of God no life is to be found.

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Pilgrim. How was it with you then?

Adam. On hearing his voice, we used to retire into some thicket or cave; and could we have hid ourselves from him, we should. But it was all folly; there is no hiding one's self from God. Yet when we stood before him, we foolishly were for justifying ourselves.

Pilgrim. But, father, what could you plead? Adam. We began to clear ourselves; 1, by laying the blame on my wife; she, on the serpent. Pilgrim. Did that avail any thing?

Adam. Avail! it only made bad worse; for nothing more displeases God, than an unwillingness to confess our sins. However, God in his justice punished us, and all according to our several demerits; first, the serpent, as the contriver of the mischief, received sentence; next, Eve, my wife; then I.

Pilgrim. And what might the sentence be?

Adam. The serpent was cursed above all other animals; my wife was to bear and bring forth children with much pain and sorrow, and, as she had made an ill nse of her influence over me, she was subjected to me; and I, for not having been satisfied with the ease, plenty, and felicity of Paradise, was sentenced to earn my subsistence with fatigue, anxiety, and trouble; witness this spade and plough, and this yoke of cattle; and hard must I labour in my old age to support myself. The sentence of death also was made known to us.

Pilgrim. That is a grievous punishment, and all the consequences of a short pleasure; but what changes happened afterwards?

Adam. No sooner was the sentence pronounced, than we felt our nature impaired. We were seized with bodily pains and infirmities. Now we stood in need of shelter from heat and cold: whereas, at first, skins of beasts, given us by God, answered that purpose. The earth began every where to shoot up weeds, briers, prickles and thorns, and these choked the esculent good products which were to serve for our nourishment; and they, otherwise, throve but in

differently; for, instead of the kindly mist which had communicated a proper humidity to the earth, we now had frequently violent rains, then extreme heat, so that we were very hard put to it, and in continual solicitude. The serpent irritated at its being debased, looked on us with an evil eye, so that here again we were in continual fear of its doing us some mischief; and not the serpent only, but many other beasts, all showed a kind of hatred and abhorrence of us.---Then what troubled me extremely was, that my wife, who had hitherto behaved with great meekness and affection, seeing herself subjected to me, began to be somewhat froward and contradictory, which gave rise to many discords. The trouble which her frowardness gave me, was worse than all the labour of my hands; yet, as her husband, and still retaining a cordial affection for her, I visibly sympathized with any pain or sorrow of her's. Oh! son, time would fail me to tell you the several changes, in body and soul, which our transgression brought upon us; and a most afflicting subject it is for me to talk of.

Pilgrim. I should have thought, father, that after the sentence of death was pronounced against you, and all these calamities were coming on, you should immediately have hastened to the tree of life, and eat of it; thus you and we should have been delivered from death.

Adam, That we should have readily done, had not the wisdom of God prevented us; but it would. only have proved our utter ruin.

Pilgrim. How so, pray?

Adam. Had we, of our own heads, seized on that tree, and made ourselves immortal, our case would· have been no better than Lucifer's, and we had become quite past repentance and conversion; the greater our gift, the more criminal it is to rebel against God. Wherefore, God in his wisdom, observing our rashness, spread over us the wings of his mercy; and that we might not, by our own conceit and temerity, corrupt ourselves more than we have, by eating of the tree of knowledge, he turned us out of Paradise,

Pilgrim. Yet one would be apt to say, that life was to be chosen before death.

Adam. You know not what you say, son. God has annexed life to himself, and graciously imparts it to whom he pleases. He who loves life, let him entirely give himself up to God; he who seeks life elsewhere than in God's favour, precipitates himself into death, of which Lucifer, and all the impious, are instances; instead of life, they have only a death full of trouble, which they sottishly imagine to be living. Pilgrim. So far I am satisfied, and much obliged to you for being so communicative; but there is one thing I have still to ask. You intimated some alteration in your soul. Did your fall, then, affect that part?

Adam. Yes, truly, and the change was not small; for, the delight and joy which it used to have in God, it has transferred to the perishable creature: as if a king, driven out of his kingdom, should betake himself to the meanest employments. What is still more, it has scarce any sense of its former glory. The consequence of this is, that being no longer directed by the divine light, it abuses the creatures, and is swayed by the desires and appetites of the body. Meat and drink originally intended for necessity, are now abused to gluttony and intemperance; apparel, for covering the body, is turned into show and vanity; the power and inclination, implanted by God for continuing our species, are turned to lust and excesses, productive of the greatest evils in society; and in like. manner every creature is, by the lawless stupidity of the depraved soul, warped from the true end of its creation. In Paradise we were strangers to all this. Pilgrim. Whence might that proceed?

Adam. The soul, after its first relapse, deprived of the real knowledge of God, seeks its life in enjoyments of its own formation, as knowing no other; for unless irradiated anew by a divine ray, it degenerates more and more, and at length becomes worse than the very brutes. Too much of this have I seen in my time. Pilgrim. What a variety of sorrows you have gone through, father!