9. We will reserve this awful record for its proper time and place. Let us now do that which Moses does in the present chapter, who wants us to consider the exceeding splendor of this primeval age of the world. Adam lived beyond the age of his grandson Enoch, and died but a short time before Noah was born. A hundred and twenty years only intervened between the death of Adam and the birth of Noah. Seth died only fourteen years before Noah's birth. Enosh and the rest of the patriarchs, except Enoch, lived at the same time with Noah. Thus by a comparison of the figures, we shall ascertain that quite a number of gray-headed patriarchs, of whom one lived seven hundred, and another nine hundred years, were contemporaries, and teaching and governing the Church of the godly.
10. The exceeding glory of the primitive world consists in this, that it contained so many good and wise and holy men. We are by no means to think that all these are merely common names of plain and simple men. They were the greatest heroes and men of renown that the world ever witnessed, next to Christ and John the Baptist. In the last day we shall behold and admire the real majesty of all these worthies, and then we shall truly behold the mighty deeds which these mighty men wrought. Yes, it will then be made manifest what Adam did, what Seth did, what Methuselah did, and the others; what they suffered from the old serpent; how they comforted and fortified themselves, by their hope in the promised seed, against all the harm and violence of the world, that is, of the Cainites; what craft they experienced; what injuries and hatred and contempt they bore for the glory of the blessed seed to be born from their lineage. We are assuredly not to imagine that these great and holy men lived without severe afflictions and innumerable crosses. All these things, I say, shall be revealed at the last day.
11. And it is an undertaking, as I said, full of profit and pleasure now to contemplate with our minds, as with open eyes, that happy age, in which so many patriarchs lived contemporaneously, nearly all of whom, except Noah, had seen and known their first father, Adam.
B. The Glory of the Cainites.
12. Also the Cainites had their glory. Among them were men most eminent in the liberal arts, and the most consummate hypocrites, who gave the true Church a world of trouble, and harassed the holy patriarchs in every possible way. We may justly call all those who were thus oppressed by them most holy martyrs and confessors. The Cainites, as Moses before intimated, very soon surpassed the other descendants of Adam in numbers and activity. Although they were compelled to revere their father Adam, yet they adopted all possible means of oppressing the Church of the godly, and especially so after the death of the first patriarch, Adam. By such wickedness, these Cainites helped to bring on the flood as retribution.
13. This power and malice of the Cainites caused the holy patriarchs to teach and instruct their Church with increased zeal and industry. What numerous and powerful sermons may we suppose were preached by them in the course of these most eventful years! There is no doubt that both Adam and Eve testified of their original state of innocence, described the glory of paradise and warned their posterity to beware of the serpent, who, by tempting them to sin, had caused all these great evils. How constant may we suppose them to have been in explaining the promise of the blessed seed! How earnestly must they have exhorted the hearts of their followers to be moved neither by the splendor of the Cainites nor by their own afflictions.