Some flow'rets of Eden ye still inherit, / But the trail of the serpent is over them all!

As we reread Genesis 2...we immediately understand WHAT is 'crafty' about the serpent's question in Genesis 3. God did NOT in fact say in Genesis 2, 'You MUST NOT EAT from any tree in the garden' (3:1). What God did say was almost exactly the opposite: 'You ARE FREE TO EAT from any tree in the garden' (except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, 2:16). The vocabulary of God in Genesis 2 indicates freedom and blessing. The vocabulary of the serpent in Genesis 3 indicates prohibition and restriction. The serpent's ploy is to suggest to the woman that God is really not so good after all. He shifts attention away from all that God in his generosity has provided for his creatures in creation and onto the one thing that God has for the moment explicitly withheld.

The Serpent, to my interpretation, was pain.

Those among them that have not received our religion do not fright any from it, and use none ill that goes over to it, so that all the while I was there one man was only punished on this occasion.

"Tell me, what's Love?" said Youth, one day, To drooping Age, who crost his way, "It is a sunny hour of play, For which repentance dear doth pay, Repentance! Repentance! And this is Love, as wise men say

They have no lawyers among them for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters