The Worship of the Serpent

p. 8

and if unnecessary, "unworthy of GOD" to ordain.

In like manner, Adam and Eve could not have violated any commandment of the second. The second table of the decalogue is for a state of society: Adam and his wife were alone. How could they, therefore, honour their father and mother, who had none? How could they commit adultery or theft against each other? How could they have borne false witness against their neighbour, or coveted his goods? And can we suppose that they would so far forget the sense of their common interest as to kill either the other, since the commission of such a crime would have left the survivor the only creature in the universe without its kind? They would not, therefore, have committed murder, even had they known (which is doubtful) the nature and the means of death. Commandments, therefore, which would restrict them from such sins as these, would have been unreasonable, and unworthy of GOD; for they could not, by any probability, be broken. Besides, the violation of them presupposes that tendency to sin--that corruption of their nature, which did not exist in them until after the Fall.