Matthew 26:74

Then began he to curse and to swear, I know not the man. And straightway the cock crew.

The typical onset and progress of temptation are evident in this shocking sequence of events. One may readily believe that if Peter had been placed fairly on oath, if he had been called as a witness, or if there had been any formal recognition of his presence there, he would freely have acknowledged his discipleship. It was the very casualness of temptation's initial onset that proved his undoing. It was only a "little deception" that Peter envisioned at first. He was only trying to shake off the obtrusive curiosity of a maid who had no business asking him in the first place. The beginning of this shameful episode can be pinpointed in that unwelcome, unexpected, unfair intrusion of that maid into the privacy of a man's thoughts; but that was only the tiny hole in the dike that rapidly enlarged until the flood overwhelmed him. "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."[25]