hsafed.

247. None of these things are recorded of the wicked posterity of
Cain. When Moses has said that Cain begat a son named Enoch, and that
he built a city to which he gave the name of his son, calling it
Enoch, the sacred historian immediately cuts off the memory of Cain
altogether and, as it were, buries him forever with these few short
words of record. He seems to entertain no further care or concern for
either his life or his death. He merely records temporal
blessings--that he begat a son and that he built a city. For as the
gift of reproduction was not taken away from the murderer Cain,
neither was the gift of dominion taken from him. But he lost all the
rich blessings of the earth because it had drunk the blood of his
brother, as we have shown above.

248. The Holy Spirit records these things in order that we may see
that there was, from the very beginning, two churches: one the church
of the sons of Satan and of the flesh, which often makes sudden and
great increase; and the other the church of the sons of God, which is
usually weak and makes slow progress. Although the Scriptures do not
relate how these two churches lived together in the beginning, yet, as
it was declared by God to Satan, "I will put enmity between thy seed
and her seed," it is certain that the church of Cain was ever hostile
to the Church of Adam. And the present text fully shows that the sons
of men so increased and prevailed that they almost completely
perverted and destroyed the Church of the sons of God. For in the
great flood, only eight souls of them were saved; all the rest of the
human race perished in the waters on account of their sin.

249. And this is a calamity of the true Church, common to all ages: as
soon as she begins to increase, she is compelled to oppose with all
her might Satan and the ungodly. She is at length tired out by the
wickedness of her enemy, and is then either obliged to yield to her
enraged foe, overcome by the cross and its afflictions, or she sinks
under the seductions of pleasures and riches. So it was with the
posterity of Adam. Broken down, at length, under so long a war with
the sons of men, they yielded, being reduced at last to eight souls
only, who were saved. Ungodliness having so far prevailed, and the
godly losing ground, the Lord at length interposes and saves the few
righteous remaining; but all the rest, both the seduced and the
seducers, he punishes, including them in the same judgment.