The Deception of the Senses

Once the eyes were opened, they knew that they were naked (Genesis 3:7). For this happens to those being deceived. For after the activity of their wickedness is made manifest, they come to realize that they were stripped of virtue; this is granted again by the pitiless God, so that he who works wickedness might not remain entirely insensate and stay completely outside of virtue.

This is the deception of the devil: that he makes the things seen according to the true logic by the eye of the pure soul to be seen conversely, supposing the pleasant instead of the good, and showing the good as something harmful. Thus also eyes are opened which previously were usefully closed. For there is in the soul an eye which imposes itself upon the intelligible through itself, but there is that which follows from instruction by another, which the serpent having perverted, filled the things of deception, so that both sensation and the mind would undergo harm; for when sensation suffers perversion, then also the opinions of the mind become diverted.

It has been said concerning those who have used things contrary: 'Woe to those saying the evil is good and the good is evil' (Isaiah 5:20). Thus, pleasures were raised up as the cause of errors; for even those in wisdom say they prefer the pleasant. For many prefer the easy way over virtue, not accepting the strenuous, and they are stripped because of it. Therefore, the pleasant things must be despised, since they become a hypothesis for sins.

There are some who say that 'Adam ate with it' (Gen 3:6) indicates his consent, so that he might not be utterly destroyed, agreeing with what was said by Paul: 'Adam was not deceived, but the woman, having been deceived, came into transgression' (1 Tim 2:14), as if he were able to turn away from the wickedness through her also. And they sewed fig leaves and made themselves girdles. And they heard the voice of the Lord walking in the garden, the cowardly ones, and both Adam and his wife fled from the face of God amidst the tree of the paradise (Gen 3:8). Remaining with the things previously viewed concerning the paradise and Adam and the woman, we connect these things. Since they knew that they were naked, having sewn fig leaves, they made themselves girdles; and having heard the voice of the Lord walking in paradise at evening, they hid from the face of God in the midst of the tree of paradise. For it is fitting to say, not speaking ill of those following the history, how they sewed themselves girdles from fig leaves, and how those who had done things unworthy of it hear the voice of the Lord walking, and why he walks at evening, and further how they hid — what they thought concerning God — under the tree. For I think that in all these things they do not have a worthy saving of the sequence of the history, worthy of the narration from the Holy Spirit. We, then, as we have done in what went before, shall also in these perceive the divine element of what is written.

The word introduces two conditions of nakedness: one before the transgression, the other after it — the one shameless, the other known and producing shame. But it was also said in the things said before that, doing nothing worthy of shame but freed from every stain, they had their mind with boldness toward God — for such is virtue; but when they had become transgressors of God’s command, then stripped of the beauty of virtue, remaining naked of it, they were ashamed, reckoning from what goods into what evils they had fallen. Feeling still exposed, next they also hide from the God of all walking.

For the one sinning and not yet having cut out perception, but still cherishing the sin, is refuted by the common notions sown by God — the Maker ever crying out through them — but in still being held by the deception of the error, he often stitches together defenses of his sins. Or is this not clear in many? For often the one who has used anger procures plausible defenses, from which he will present the reasonableness of anger, sometimes even using the demonstration from the scriptures to establish his own will — which is the work of one stitching together from leaves and not from fruit some covering, not a perfect one; for this the girdle represents. For it is possible to hear the angry saying that even a saint in anger […].