"To eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," is to persuade oneself that he wills and thinks and does good from himself and not from God, and thus that he is as God: that the antediluvians were in that persuasion, shown from the Word and illustrated (49 [CL 135]).

Man was cast out of the garden of Eden, that he might not have wisdom concerning God from his own love, for thus there is eternal damnation: wherefore they who are in sensual love are able to talk about God, but still they do not acknowledge God (shown, 50).