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| The Significance of Abel, Seth, and Enos to Christ and His Body the Church.
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Chapter 18.—The Significance of
Abel, Seth, and Enos to Christ and His Body the Church.
“And to Seth,” it is said,
“there was born a son, and he called his name Enos: he hoped to
call on the name of the Lord God.”824
Here we have a loud testimony to
the truth. Man, then, the son of the resurrection, lives in
hope: he lives in hope as long as the city of God, which is
begotten by faith in the resurrection, sojourns in this world.
For in these two men, Abel, signifying “grief,” and his brother
Seth, signifying “resurrection,” the death of Christ and His
life from the dead are prefigured. And by faith in these is
begotten in this world the city of God, that is to say, the man who
has hoped to call on the name of the Lord. “For by hope,”
says the apostle, “we are saved: but hope that is seen is not
hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we
hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for
it.”825
Who can
avoid referring this to a profound mystery? For did not Abel hope
to call upon the name of the Lord God when his sacrifice is
mentioned in Scripture as having been accepted by God? Did not
Seth himself hope to call on the name of the Lord God, of whom it
was said, “For God hath appointed me another seed instead of
Abel?” Why then is this which is found to be common to all the
godly specially attributed to Enos, unless because it was fit that
in him, who is mentioned as the first-born of the father of those
generations which were separated to the better part of the heavenly
city, there should be a type of the man, or society of men, who
live not according to man in contentment with earthly felicity, but
according to God in hope of everlasting felicity? And it was not
said, “He hoped in the Lord God,” nor “He called on the name
of the Lord God,” but “He hoped to call on the name of the Lord
God.” And what does this “hoped to call” mean, unless it is
a prophecy that a people should arise who, according to the
election of grace, would call on the name of the Lord God? It is
this which has been said by another prophet, and which the apostle
interprets of the people who belong to the grace of God: “And
it shall be that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved.”826
For these two expressions, “And
he called his name Enos, which means man,” and “He hoped to
call on the name of the Lord God,” are sufficient proof that man
ought not to rest his hopes in himself; as it is elsewhere written,
“Cursed is the man that trusteth in man.”827
Consequently no one ought to
trust in himself that he shall become a citizen of that other city
which is not dedicated in the name of Cain’s son in this present
time, that is to say, in the fleeting course of this mortal world,
but in the immortality of perpetual blessedness.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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