D. This too the venerable Prince resents, and to preserve the Race in Bounds of Laws subordinate and limited to Duty, Commands that this first Breach be not pass’d by, lest the Precedent upon Record stand to future Times to encourage like Rebellion.
Cain. And is it then my Sovereign Parent’s Will?
D. It is his Will, that thou his eldest Son, his Image, his belov’d, should be maintain’d in all the Rights of Sovereignty deriv’d to thee from him; and not be left expos’d to injury and Power usurped, but should do thy self Justice on the rebel Race.
Cain. And so I will; Abel shall quickly know what ’tis to trample on his elder Brother; shall know that he’s thus sentenc’d by his Father, and I’m commission’d but to execute his high Command, his Sentence, which is God’s, and that he falls by the Hand of Heavenly Justice.
So now Satan had done his Work, he had deluded the Mother to a Breach against the first and only Command, he had drawn Adam to the same Snare, and now he brings in Cain prompted by his own Rage, and deluded by his, (Satan’s,) Craft, to commit Murder, nay a Fratricide, an aggravated Murther.
Upon this he sends out Cain, while the bloody Rage was in its Ferment, and wickedly at the same Time bringing Abel, innocent and fearing no ill, just in his Way, he suggests to his Thoughts such Words as these.
Look you Cain, see how Divine Justice concurs with your Father’s righteous Sentence, see there’s thy Brother Abel directed by Heaven to fall into thy Hands unarm’d, unguarded, that thou may’st do thy self Justice upon him without Fear; see thou may’st kill him, and if thou hast a Mind to conceal it, no Eyes can see, or will the World ever know it, so that no Resentment or Revenge upon thee, or thy Posterity, can be apprehended, but it may be said some wild Beast had rent him; nor will any one suggest that thou, his Brother, and Superior, could possibly be the Person.
Cain prepar’d for the Fact, by his former avow’d Rage and Resolution of Revenge, was so much the less prepar’d to avoid the Snare thus artfully contriv’d by the Master of all Subtilty, the Devil; so he immediately runs upon his Brother Abel, and after a little unarm’d Resistance, the innocent poor Man expecting no such Mischief, was conquer’d and murther’d; after which, as is to be supposed, the exasperated Crew of Cain’s outrageous Race, over-run all his Family and Houshold, killing Man, Woman and Child.
It is objected here that we have no Authority in Scripture to prove this Part of the Story; but I answer, ’tis not likely but that Abel, as well as Cain, being at Man’s Estate long before this, had several Children by their own Sisters, for they were the only Men in the World who were allow’d the Marrying their own Sisters, there being no other Women then in the World; and as we never read of any of Abel’s Posterity, ’tis likewise as probable they were all murther’d, as that they should kill Abel only, whose Sons might immediately fall upon Cain for the Blood of their Father, and so the World have been involv’d in a Civil War as soon as there were two Families in it.