309. The first table, therefore, is to be set forth first of all, and instruction as regards the true worship is to receive precedence to all else. This means, first to make the tree good on which good fruit is to grow. Now, our adversaries take the diametrically opposite course; they want to have the good fruit before they have even the tree.
310. Moreover, I believe that about this time there was added some visible ceremony of divine worship, for God is ever wont thus to do. He always joins with the Word some visible sign. When Abel and Cain presented their offerings God showed by a visible sign from heaven that he had respect unto Abel and his offering, but not unto Cain and his offering. And so, in all probability, it was in this case and at this time. When the Church began to flourish and the Word of God was publicly taught with considerable success, God added also some visible sign, that the Church might assuredly know that she pleased God.
311. But whatever that sign was, whether fire from heaven or something else, God withheld it until the third generation, that men might learn to be content with the Word alone. Afterwards, when men had comforted themselves by the Word alone against the Cainites, in all tribulations, God of his great mercy added to the Word some visible sign. He established a place and appointed persons and ceremonies to which the Church might gather for the exercise of faith, for preaching and prayer. By means of these things, the Word or the first table and then a visible sign ordained of God, a Church is constituted, in which men undergo discipline through teaching, hearing, and the partaking of the sacraments. Then upon these things will assuredly follow the works of the second table, which are acceptable, and acts of worship, only on the part of those who possess and practice the first table.
312. This gift of God, Moses sets forth in the few short words of the text before us, when he says, "Then began men to call upon the name of Jehovah." For this beginning to call upon the name of Jehovah was not on the part of the Cainites, as the Jews explained the passage, but on the part of the godly posterity of Adam, which alone was then the true Church. If any of the posterity of Cain were saved, it must of necessity have been by joining this Church.
313. The sum of the first four chapters of Genesis is that we are to believe in a resurrection of the dead after this life, and a life eternal through the Seed of the woman. This is the blessed portion of the godly, of them that believe, who in this life are filled with afflictions and subject to injuries at the hands of all men. To the wicked, on the contrary, are given, as their portion, the riches and power of this world, which they use against the true Church of God.
In the first chapter it is shown that man was created unto immortality, because he was created "in the image of God."