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At present it is the history which I aim at defending, that
Scripture may not be reckoned incredible when it relates that one man
built a city at a time in which there seem to have been but four men
upon earth, or rather indeed but three, after one brother slew the
other, to wit, the first man the father of all, and Cain himself,
and his son Enoch, by whose name the city was itself called. But
they who are moved by this consideration forget to take into account
that the writer of the sacred history does not necessarily mention all
the men who might be alive at that time, but those only whom the scope
of his work required him to name. The design of that writer (who in
this matter was the instrument of the Holy Ghost) was to descend to
Abraham through the successions of ascertained generations propagated
from one man, and then to pass from Abraham's seed to the people of
God, in whom, separated as they were from other nations, was
prefigured and predicted all that relates to the city whose reign is
eternal, and to its king and founder Christ, which things were
foreseen in the Spirit as destined to come; yet neither is this object
so effected as that nothing is said of the other society of men which we
call the earthly city, but mention is made of it so far as seemed
needful to enhance the glory of the heavenly city by contrast to its
opposite. Accordingly, when the divine Scripture, in mentioning the
number of years which those men lived, concludes its account of each
man of whom it speaks, with the words, "And he begat sons and
daughters, and all his days were so and so, and he died," are we to
understand that, because it does not name those sons and daughters,
therefore, during that long term of years over which one lifetime
extended in those early days, there might not have been born very many
men, by whose united numbers not one but several cities might have been
built? But it suited the purpose of God, by whose inspiration these
histories were composed, to arrange and distinguish from the first
these two societies in their several generations, that on the one side
the generations of men, that is to say, of those who live according to
man, and on the other side the generations of the sons of God, that
is to say, of men living according to God, might be traced down
together and yet apart from one another as far as the deluge, at which
point their dissociation and association are exhibited: their
dissociation, inasmuch as the generations of both lines are recorded in
separate tables, the one line descending from the fratricide Cain,
the other from Seth, who had been born to Adam instead of him whom
his brother slew; their association, inasmuch as the good so
deteriorated that the whole race became of such a character that it was
swept away by the deluge, with the exception of one just man, whose
name was Noah, and his wife and three sons and three
daughters-in-law, which eight persons were alone deemed worthy to
escape from that desolating visitation which destroyed all men.
Therefore, although it is written, "And Cain knew his wife, and
she conceived and bare Enoch, and he builded a city and called the
name of the city after the name of his son Enoch," it does not follow
that we are to believe this to have been his first-born; for we cannot
suppose that this is proved by the expression "he knew his wife," as
if then for the first time he had had intercourse with her. For in the
case of Adam, the father of all, this expression is used not only
when Cain, who seems to have been his first-born, was conceived,
but also afterwards the same Scripture says, "Adam knew Eve his
wife, and she conceived, and bare a son, and called his name
Seth." Whence it is obvious that Scripture employs this expression
neither always when a birth is recorded nor then only when the birth of
a first-born is mentioned. Neither is it necessary to suppose that
Enoch was Cain's first-born because he named his city after him,
For it is quite possible that though he had other sons, yet tot some
reason the father loved him more than the rest. Judah was not the
first-born, though he gives his name to Judaea and the Jews. But
even though Enoch was the first-born of the city's founder, that is
no reason for supposing that the father named the city after him as soon
as he was born; for at that time he, being but a solitary man, could
not have founded a civic community, which is nothing else than a
multitude of men bound together by some associating tie. But when his
family increased to such numbers that he had quite a population, then
it became possible to him both to build a city, and give it, when
founded, the name of his son. For so long was the life of those
antediluvians, that he who lived the shortest time of those whose years
are mentioned in Scripture attained to the age of 753 years. And
though no one attained the age of a thousand years, several exceeded
the age of nine hundred. Who then can doubt that during the lifetime
of one man the human race might be so multiplied that there would be a
population to build and occupy not one but several cities? And this
might very readily be conjectured from the fact that from one man,
Abraham, in not much more than four hundred years, the numbers of the
Hebrew race so increased, that in the exodus of that people from
Egypt there are recorded to have been six hundred thousand men capable
of bearing arms, and this over and above the Idumaeans, who, though
not numbered with Israel's descendants, were yet sprung from his
brother, also a grandson of Abraham; and over and above the other
nations which were of the same stock of Abraham, though not through
Sarah, that is, his descendants by Hagar and Keturah, the
Ishmaelites, Midianites, etc.
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