For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
Ver. 5. For God doth know, &c.] It should take care of itself because nothing is hidden with God. Id quod cum Deum non lateat, sibi cavet. a It is remarkable that the devil here charges God with envy, which is his own proper disease; for ever since he himself fell from heaven, he cannot abide that any should come there; but of pure spite hindereth them all that may be. Here he envied that God should be served by man, and that man should be gifted and graced by God. So that he points out, and paints out himself, in saying that God envied man the gift of wisdom. There is nothing more usual with the wicked, than to muse as they use, and to suppose that evil to be in others that they find to be in themselves. Caligula, b that impure beast, would not believe there was any chaste person upon earth. And, I dare say, said Bonner to Hawks, the martyr, that Cranmer would recant, if he might have his living - so, judging others by himself, for Papists apply themselves, said our protomartyr, Mr Rogers, to the present state; yea, if the state should change ten times in the year, they would ever be ready at hand to change with it, and so follow the cry, and rather utterly forsake God, and be of no religion, than that they would forego lust, or living, for God or religion. c
Then your eyes shall be opened.] There is an opening of the eyes of the mind to contemplation and joy. There is also an opening of the eyes of the body to confusion and shame. He promised them the former, but intends the latter, and so cheats them, as he doth thousands now-a-days, by the cogging of a die, as St Paul hath it εν τη κυβεια , Eph 4:14 giving them an apple in exchange for paradise. Thus of old he cheated Ahab and Croesus d with promises of victory; which, when it fell out otherwise, he had a hole to creep out, and save his credit by an equivocation. Thus of latter time he begiled Pope Sylvester II., assuring him that he should never die, till he came to say mass in Jerusalem; he, resolving never to come there, made no reckoning but to live a long time. But it fell out somewhat otherwise; for as he was saying mass in a certain church in Rome, called Jerusalem, fearing nothing, the devil claimed his due, and had it. For he was there and then taken with a strong fever, and lying on his deathbed, he sent for all his cardinals, and declaring before them what a wretched bargain he had made with the devil, selling his soul for the popedom, and deceived by him with promise of long life, he bitterly bewailed his own folly, and advised them to beware by his example. e And was not Leoline II., Prince of North Wales, as finely cheated? For, consulting with a witch, he was told that it was his destiny to ride through London with a crown on his head. Hereupon, he growing burthensome to the English Borders, was in a battle overthrown. His head fixed upon a stake, and adorned with a paper crown, was by a horseman triumphantly carried through London; and so the prophecy was fulfilled, A.D. 1282.
And ye shall be as gods.] The serpent's grammar first taught, saith Damianus, "to bring down God to much; you will be as gods." Deum pluraliter declinare; eritis sicut Dii. This the woman understood of the Trinity, as appears, Gen 3:22 but the devil might mean it of the angels (so the Chaldee Paraphrast translates it) which had sinned, and now had woeful experience of the good which they had lost, and the evil wherein they lay. "Lo, this only have I found," saith the wise man, "that God made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions". Ecc 7:29 Ipsi autem quaesiverunt cogitationes Magnatum (so some render it), sive angelorum; apostatarum scilicet. But they soon sought out the tricks or devices of great ones, that is, of the angels, who, not content with their own station, "forsook it". Jdg 1:6 So did our Protaplasts.
a Picherellus in Colmopaea .
b Dio in Calig.
c Act. et Mon., fol. 1441.
d Croesus Halyn penetrans magnam disperdet opum vim. - Herod.
e Funccius in Chronol. Intelligit se a diabolo, amphibolia vocis, circumventum animadvertit sibi moriendum esse, pensumq. Satanae reddendum, &c. - Heylin's Geog., p. 493.