A celebrated naturalist tells us that one day he saw a bird
drowning in a lake, and he felt sure that the bird had mistaken
the water for the sky; it was a bright, transparent day, the
clear, calm lake reflected the sky and the whole landscape in
its depths, and the bird, not discerning that the world below
it was a world of shadows, was betrayed to its doom. So all
the glories of the upper world appear inverted in the world
of evil. The lofty, the pure, the beautiful, the bright, are
all seductively reflected in the depths of Satan; they are
exaggerated there, they are seen in surpassing magnitude and
splendor; error seems some nobler truth, disobedience some
larger liberty, forbidden things seem the sweetest flowers and
mellowest fruits of paradise.--W. L. WATKINSON, “The
Transfigured Sackcloth.”
(1510)