But now corruption, sin, death, and every evil of the world, have entered into the church, the spouse of Christ, just as they entered into Eve, the spouse of Adam in paradise, in the same way, and from the same cause, viz., a desire of more, or other knowledge, than that which comes from God alone. This desire is the serpent's voice within every man, which does all that to him, and in him, which the serpent at the tree did to Eve. It carries on the first deceit, it shows and recommends to him that same beautiful tree of own will, own wit, and own wisdom, springing up within him, which Eve saw in the garden; and yet so blind is this love of wisdom as not to see, that his eating of it is in the strictest truth his eating of the same forbidden fruits as Eve did, and keeping up in himself all that death and separation from God, which the first knowledge- hunger brought forth.