Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Why It is That, as Soon as Cain’s Son Enoch Has Been Named, the Genealogy is Forthwith Continued as Far as the Deluge, While After the Mention of Enos, Seth’s Son, the Narrative Returns Again to the Creation of Man.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter 21.—Why It is That, as
Soon as Cain’s Son Enoch Has Been Named, the Genealogy is
Forthwith Continued as Far as the Deluge, While After the Mention
of Enos, Seth’s Son, the Narrative Returns Again to the Creation
of Man.
We must first see why, in the
enumeration of Cain’s posterity, after Enoch, in whose name the
city was built, has been first of all mentioned, the rest are at
once enumerated down to that terminus of which I have spoken, and
at which that race and the whole line was destroyed in the deluge;
while, after Enos the son of Seth, has been mentioned, the rest are
not at once named down to the deluge, but a clause is inserted to
the following effect: “This is the book of the generations of
Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God
made He him; male and female created He them; and blessed them, and
called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.”835
This seems
to me to be inserted for this purpose, that here again the
reckoning of the times may start from Adam himself—a purpose
which the writer had not in view in speaking of the earthly city,
as if God mentioned it, but did not take account of its duration.
But why does he return to this recapitulation after mentioning the
son of Seth, the man who hoped to call on the name of the Lord God,
unless because it was fit thus to present these two cities, the one
beginning with a murderer and ending in a murderer (for Lamech,
too, acknowledges to his two wives that he had committed murder),
the other built up by him who hoped to call upon the name of the
Lord God? For the highest and complete terrestrial duty of the
city of God, which is a stranger in this world, is that which was
exemplified in the individual who was begotten by him who typified
the resurrection of the murdered Abel. That one man is the unity
of the whole heavenly city, not yet indeed complete, but to be
completed, as this prophetic figure foreshows. The son of Cain,
therefore, that is, the son of possession (and of what but an
earthly possession?), may have a name in the earthly city which was
built in his name. It is of such the Psalmist says, “They call
their lands after their own names.”836
Wherefore they incur what is
written in another psalm: “Thou, O Lord, in Thy city wilt
despise their image.”837
But as for the son of Seth, the
son of the resurrection, let him hope to call on the name of the
Lord God. For he prefigures that society of men which says,
“But I am like a green olive-tree in the house of God: I have
trusted in the mercy of God.”838
But let him not seek the empty
honors of a famous name upon earth, for “Blessed is the man that
maketh the name of the Lord his trust, and respecteth not vanities
nor lying follies.”839
After having presented the two
cities, the one founded in the material good of this world, the
other in hope in God, but both starting from a common gate opened
in Adam into this mortal state, and both running on and running out
to their proper and merited ends, Scripture begins to reckon the
times, and in this reckoning includes other generations, making a
recapitulation from Adam, out of whose condemned seed, as out of
one mass handed over to merited damnation, God made some vessels of
wrath to dishonor and others vessels of mercy to honor; in
punishment rendering to the former what is due, in grace giving to
the latter what is not due: in order that by the very comparison
of itself with the vessels of wrath, the heavenly city, which
sojourns on earth, may learn not to put confidence in the liberty
of its own will, but may hope to call on the name of the Lord
God. For will, being a nature which was made good by the good
God, but mutable by the immutable, because it was made out of
nothing, can both decline from good to do evil, which takes place
when it freely chooses, and can also escape the evil and do good,
which takes place only by divine assistance.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
