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| Of the Cause of Cain’s Crime and His Obstinacy, Which Not Even the Word of God Could Subdue.
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Chapter 7.—Of the Cause of
Cain’s Crime and His Obstinacy, Which Not Even the Word of God
Could Subdue.
But though God made use of this
very mode of address which we have been endeavoring to explain, and
spoke to Cain in that form by which He was wont to accommodate
Himself to our first parents and converse with them as a companion,
what good influence had it on Cain? Did he not fulfill his wicked
intention of killing his brother even after he was warned by
God’s voice? For when God had made a distinction between their
sacrifices, neglecting Cain’s, regarding Abel’s, which was
doubtless intimated by some visible sign to that effect; and when
God had done so because the works of the one were evil but those of
his brother good, Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.
For thus it is written: “And the Lord said unto Cain, Why are
thou wroth, and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou offerest
rightly, but dost not rightly distinguish, hast thou not sinned?
Fret not thyself, for unto thee shall be his turning, and thou
shalt rule over him.”785
In this admonition administered
by God to Cain, that clause indeed, “If thou offerest rightly,
but dost not rightly distinguish, hast thou not sinned?” is
obscure, inasmuch as it is not apparent for what reason or purpose
it was spoken, and many meanings have been put upon it, as each one
who discusses it attempts to interpret it according to the rule of
faith. The truth is, that a sacrifice is “rightly offered”
when it is offered to the true God, to whom alone we must
sacrifice. And it is “not rightly distinguished” when we do
not rightly distinguish the places or seasons or materials of the
offering, or the person offering, or the person to whom it is
presented, or those to whom it is distributed for food after the
oblation. Distinguishing786
is here used for
discriminating,—whether when an offering is made in a place where
it ought not or of a material which ought to be offered not there
but elsewhere; or when an offering is made at a wrong time, or of a
material suitable not then but at some other time; or when that is
offered which in no place nor any time ought to be offered; or when
a man keeps to himself choicer specimens of the same kind than he
offers to God; or when he or any other who may not lawfully partake
profanely eats of the oblation. In which of these particulars
Cain displeased God, it is difficult to determine. But the
Apostle John, speaking of these brothers, says, “Not as Cain, who
was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew
he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s
righteous.”787
He thus
gives us to understand that God did not respect his offering
because it was not rightly “distinguished” in this, that he
gave to God something of his own but kept himself to himself. For
this all do who follow not God’s will but their own, who live not
with an upright but a crooked heart, and yet offer to God such
gifts as they suppose will procure from Him that He aid them not by
healing but by gratifying their evil passions. And this is the
characteristic of the earthly city, that it worships God or gods
who may aid it in reigning victoriously and peacefully on earth not
through love of doing good, but through lust of rule. The good
use the world that they may enjoy God: the wicked, on the
contrary, that they may enjoy the world would fain use God,—those
of them, at least, who have attained to the belief that He is and
takes an interest in human affairs. For they who have not yet
attained even to this belief are still at a much lower level.
Cain, then, when he saw that God had respect to his brother’s
sacrifice, but not to his own, should have humbly chosen his good
brother as his example, and not proudly counted him his rival.
But he was wroth, and his countenance fell. This angry regret for
another person’s goodness, even his brother’s, was charged upon
him by God as a great sin. And He accused him of it in the
interrogation, “Why are thou wroth, and why is thy countenance
fallen?” For God saw that he envied his brother, and of this He
accused him. For to men, from whom the heart of their fellow is
hid, it might be doubtful and quite uncertain whether that sadness
bewailed his own wickedness by which, as he had learned, he had
displeased God, or his brother’s goodness, which had pleased God,
and won His favorable regard to his sacrifice. But God, in giving
the reason why He refused to accept Cain’s offering and why Cain
should rather have been displeased at himself than at his brother,
shows him that though he was unjust in “not rightly
distinguishing,” that is, not rightly living and being unworthy
to have his offering received, he was more unjust by far in hating
his just brother without a cause.
Yet He does not dismiss him without
counsel, holy, just, and good. “Fret not
thyself,”
He says, “for unto thee shall be his turning, and thou shall rule
over him.” Over his brother, does He mean? Most certainly
not. Over what, then, but sin? For He had said, “Thou hast
sinned,” and then He added, “Fret not thyself, for to thee
shall be its turning, and thou shall rule over it.”788
| 788 We alter the pronoun to suit
Augustin’s interpretation. | And the
“turning” of sin to the man can be understood of his conviction
that the guilt of sin can be laid at no other man’s door but his
own. For this is the health-giving medicine of penitence, and the
fit plea for pardon; so that, when it is said, “To thee its
turning,” we must not supply “shall be,” but we must read,
“To thee let its turning be,” understanding it as a command,
not as a prediction. For then shall a man rule over his sin when
he does not prefer it to himself and defend it, but subjects it by
repentance; otherwise he that becomes protector of it shall surely
become its prisoner. But if we understand this sin to be that
carnal concupiscence of which the apostle says, “The flesh
lusteth against the spirit,”789
among the fruits of which lust he
names envy, by which assuredly Cain was stung and excited to
destroy his brother, then we may properly supply the words “shall
be,” and read, “To thee shall be its turning, and thou shalt
rule over it.” For when the carnal part which the apostle calls
sin, in that place where he says, “It is not I who do it, but sin
that dwelleth in me,”790
that part which the philosophers
also call vicious, and which ought not to lead the mind, but which
the mind ought to rule and restrain by reason from illicit
motions,—when, then, this part has been moved to perpetrate any
wickedness, if it be curbed and if it obey the word of the apostle,
“Yield not your members instruments of unrighteousness unto
sin,”791
it is turned
towards the mind and subdued and conquered by it, so that reason
rules over it as a subject. It was this which God enjoined on him
who was kindled with the fire of envy against his brother, so that
he sought to put out of the way him whom he should have set as an
example. “Fret not thyself,” or compose thyself, He says:
withhold thy hand from crime; let not sin reign in your mortal body
to fulfill it in the lusts thereof, nor yield your members
instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. “For to thee shall be
its turning,” so long as you do not encourage it by giving it the
rein, but bridle it by quenching its fire. “And thou shalt rule
over it;” for when it is not allowed any external actings, it
yields itself to the rule of the governing mind and righteous will,
and ceases from even internal motions. There is something similar
said in the same divine book of the woman, when God questioned and
judged them after their sin, and pronounced sentence on them
all,—the devil in the form of the serpent, the woman and her
husband in their own persons. For when He had said to her, “I
will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow
shall thou bring forth children,” then He added, “and thy
turning shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”792
What is
said to Cain about his sin, or about the vicious concupiscence of
his flesh, is here said of the woman who had sinned; and we are to
understand that the husband is to rule his wife as the soul rules
the flesh. And therefore, says the apostle, “He that loveth his
wife, loveth himself; for no man ever yet hated his own flesh.”793
This
flesh, then, is to be healed, because it belongs to ourselves: is
not to be abandoned to destruction as if it were alien to our
nature. But Cain received that counsel of God in the spirit of
one who did not wish to amend. In fact, the vice of envy grew
stronger in him; and, having entrapped his brother, he slew him.
Such was the founder of the earthly city. He was also a figure of
the Jews who slew Christ the Shepherd of the flock of men,
prefigured by Abel the shepherd of sheep: but as this is an
allegorical and prophetical matter, I forbear to explain it now;
besides, I remember that I have made some remarks upon it in
writing against Faustus the Manichæan.794
| 794 C. Faustum. Man.
xii. c. 9. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
