Chapter III.
On the transgression of the first parents.
Concerning the fault of the first parents, these things are to be held: that the woman, consenting to the diabolic temptation, desired knowledge and excellence after the manner of God, and desired no less to experience the sweetness of the forbidden tree; and at length she fell into transgression of the precept. - Nor content with this, by offering the fruit of the forbidden tree, she led the man, who, unwilling to grieve his delights, did not correct the woman, but rather gave consent to her evil persuasion; and by tasting the offered fruit, he became a transgressor of the divine commandment.
Now the reason for understanding the aforesaid is this: since from the first principle, as was said above, there had been given to man a twofold sense and appetite with respect to the twofold book and with respect to the twofold good, so that according to the freedom of the will man could turn to either, the woman, having heard the exterior suggestion of the serpent, did not have recourse to the interior book, which renders itself legible to the right judgment of reason, but kept her sense fixed upon the exterior book and began to occupy herself with the exterior good. And because her sense did not approach the infallible truth, her appetite began to turn toward the mutable good. She therefore desired what the devil promised, and thus she consented to do what he suggested. By desiring excellent knowledge, therefore, she was raised up into pride; and raised up into pride, by this very thing she was enticed to gluttony; and through this she was thirdly cast down by disobedience. The first was in the mind, the second in sensuality, the third in action.
And just as the temptation, beginning from the lower part, reached all the way to the highest, since from hearing through desire it came to consent, so conversely the disorder, beginning from the higher part, reached all the way to the lowest and produced one consummated sin, which in human nature is the beginning of all sin and the origin of evils.
For the woman, having been enticed, enticed the man, who, similarly turned toward the exterior book and toward the mutable good, esteeming too highly the companionship of the woman and the solace of her society, was unwilling either to correct the woman or to grieve his own delights. And since he ought to have corrected her and did not correct her, therefore the sin of the woman is imputed to him. But because he was unwilling to grieve his own delights by repelling the woman from himself, he began to love himself excessively, and through this, withdrawing from divine friendship, he fell into gluttony and disobedience.
The transgression of the precept was therefore common to both, although from different causes, for it was not the man, but the woman who was deceived; in both, however, namely in the man and the woman, there was a disordering from the highest to the lowest, because first in the mind or in reason, then in sensuality, and lastly in deed. For each was prostrated through disobedience and enticed through gluttony, because each was raised up in pride: the woman indeed by desiring and pursuing what she had not yet received, the man by excessively loving and prizing what he already had; whence the woman believed she would be exalted by eating, but Adam, thinking himself something great and dear to God, believed he would be punished less severely. For he had not yet experienced the rigor of divine severity.
And thus each, while inordinately raising himself above himself, fell miserably below himself, from the state of innocence and grace to the state of guilt and misery.