The teaching also of the second chapter sets forth the same thing, "In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." It follows that the first created man and woman could not have died if they had not eaten of that fruit. By their sin of eating they fell from immortality to mortality, and they begat an offspring like unto themselves.
In the third chapter immortality is set forth anew, as restored by the promise of the Seed of the woman.
In the fourth chapter we have an especial example of immortality set before us in Abel, who, after he had been slain by his brother, was received into the bosom of God, who testified that the voice of the blood of Abel cried unto him from the ground.
314. And the fifth chapter, which now follows, is expressly written to set forth the immortality of Enoch, who was taken up into heaven by the Lord. Although the following chapter is necessary as a chronicle of the number of the years of the generation of the righteous, yet its most remarkable feature is its record that Enoch did not die like Adam, nor was slain like Abel, nor carried away, nor torn to pieces by lions and bears, but was taken up into heaven and translated into immortality by the Lord himself; all which was written that we might believe in the Seed of the woman, Christ our Redeemer and Satan's conqueror, and that through him we also might expect a life immortal after this mortal and afflicted life.
315. This harmony of these five chapters the Jews see not, for they are destitute of that sun which sheds light upon these things and makes them manifest; which sun is Christ, by whom we have the remission of sins and life immortal.
CHAPTER V.
| I. | THE BOOK OF THE FIRST GENERATIONS OF MAN, AND THE GLORY OF THE CAINITES. | |||
| A. | THE BOOK OF THE FIRST GENERATIONS OF MAN. | |||
| 1. | The reasons why Moses records the generations of Adam [1]. | |||
| 2. | Why he so particularly gives the years, and in the case of each patriarch adds "and he died" [1-2]. | |||
| 3. | Why Enoch is placed in the records of the dead [3-4]. | |||
| * | Was Enoch a sinner, and do sinners have hope of eternal life [4]. | |||
| * | Of death. | |||
| a. | How we are to comfort ourselves against death [5]. | |||
| b. | How reason views death, and how the best heathen philosophers viewed it [6]. | |||
| c. | The knowledge the Scriptures give us of death [6]. | |||
| 4. | How we may be greatly profited by the book of the generations of the ancient world [7]. | |||
| 5. | Why the book of the generations of Cain is larger than that of Seth's [7]. | |||
| * | How terrible that both lines were totally destroyed, except eight persons [8]. | |||
| 6. | The aim of Moses in writing this book of the generations of Adam [9]. | |||
| * | The glory of the first world [10]. | |||
| a. | What was this glory [9-10]. | |||
| b. | Why this glory was revealed [10]. | |||
| c. | Profitable and interesting to meditate upon it [11]. | |||
| d. | The patriarchs of the first world the most holy of all martyrs [12]. | |||
| B. | THE GLORY OF THE CAINITES. | |||
| 1. | The Cainites greatly tormented God's Church, especially after Adam's death [12]. | |||
| 2. | To what end their hatred and persecution served the holy patriarchs [13]. | |||
| * | Why Moses did not record the zeal of the holy fathers against the Cainites [14]. | |||
| * | Why Moses gives such a short description of the deluge [15]. | |||
| * | The character of the first world [16]. | |||
| * | Luther's lamentation over the character of the last world; its approaching destruction, and an earnest prayer to God [16-18]. | |||