And therefore a certain author, whose name, _for fear of the Sex's resentment_ I conceal, brings her in, calling to _Adam_ at a great distance, in an imperious haughty manner, beckoning to him with her hand, thus; _Here_, says she, _you cowardly faint-hearted wretch, take this branch of heavenly fruit, eat and be a stupid fool no longer; eat and be wise; eat and be a God; and know, to your eternal shame, that your wife has been made an enlightn'd Goddess before you_.
He tells you _Adam_ hung back a little at first, and trembl'd, _afraid to trespass_: _What ails the_ SOT, says the new Termagant? _what are you afraid of? did God forbid you! yes, and why? that we might not be knowing and wise like himself! What reason can there be that we, who have capacious souls, able to receive knowledge, should have it withheld? take it, you Fool, and eat; don't you see how I am exalted in soul by it, and am quite another Creature? Take it_, I say, _or, if you don't, I'll go and cut down the Tree, and you shall never eat any of it at all, and you shall be still a fool, and be governed by your wife for ever_.
Thus, if this interpretation of the thing be just, she Scolded him into it; Rated him, and brought him to it by the terror of her voice; a thing that has retained a dreadful influence over him ever since; nor have the greatest of _Adam_'s Successors, how light soever some husbands make of it in this age, been ever able, since that, to conceal their terror, at the very Sound; nay, if we may believe history, it prevailed even among the Gods; not all the noise of _Vulcan_'s hammers could silence the clamours of that outrageous whore his Goddess; nay, even _Jupiter_ himself led such a life with a termagant wife, that once, they say, _Juno_ out-scolded the noise of all his Thunders, and was within an ace of brawling him out of Heaven. But to return to the Devil.
With these views he resolv'd, it seems, to attack the woman; and if you consider him as a Devil, and what he aim'd at, and consider the fair prospect he had of success, I must confess, I do not see who can blame him, or at least, how any thing less could be expected from him; But we shall meet with it again by and by.
_Of the station Satan had in Heaven before he fell; the nature and original of his crime, and some of Mr._ Milton_'s mistakes about it._