Note 53 — Quest XXI.
Reading edition
Josephus indeed, (See Antiq. Lib. I. cap. 2.) intimates, that the serpent was, at first, endowed with speech, and that his loss of it was inflicted for his tempting man; but it is a groundless conjecture arising from a supposition, that those things spoken of in Gen. iii. which are attributed to the devil, were done without him, which is not only his opinion, but of many other Jewish writers, and several modern ones.