biteth

Updated: May 6, 2025

Oh, my brother! do not touch that cup that is offered to you by the harlot world, spiced and fragrant and foaming; 'at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. But take the pure joys which the Christ, loved, trusted, obeyed, summoned to your feast and welcomed in your heart, will bring to you; and these shall grow and greaten until the perfection of the Heavens.

Alexander Maclaren - Expositions of Holy Scripture : St. John Chapters I to XIV

I do not know why, but it may have been, and probably was, because all the anguish and sorrow that has ever come under my personal observation, has been occasioned by that drink that "biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder," that the scene of the morning mingled with the thought of my cousins below eagerly quaffing their cup of bliss; the sweetest that earth offers to youthful lips.

M. A. Cornelius - Little Wolf: A Tale of the Western Frontier

When we come to grasp the sweet thing that we have been tempted to seize, there is a serpent that starts up amongst all the flowers. When the evil act is done opposite of the prophet's roll it is sweet in the lips, but oh! it is bitter afterwards. 'At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder! Then, you may say again, 'All that is very much exaggerated.

Alexander Maclaren - Expositions of Holy Scripture: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and First Book of Samuel,: Second Samuel, First Kings, and Second Kings chapters I to VII

Where the streams of sin are sweeping the people down to damnation and dark despair go there. Where the poor people are being ruined by that cup which not only curses now, but at the last 'biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder' go there. Where struggling souls are crying for sympathy and help go there.

Thomas Henry Howard - Standards of Life and Service