passionately given to pleasure, without doubt despised the plain
maidens of the pious race who had been reared by the holy patriarchs
not delicately, but simply and modestly, being arrayed in homely garb.
There was hence no necessity of making a law also for the maidens,
inasmuch as they were in any case neglected by the noble Cainites.

106. If you study the history of nations you will find that women have
been the occasion for the overthrow of the strongest kingdoms. Well
known is the disgrace of Helen. The sacred writings demonstrate also
that woman occasioned the fall of the whole human race. This, however,
should be mentioned without reflection upon the sex, for we have a
command, "Honor thy father and thy mother," Ex 20, 12. Likewise,
"Husbands, love your wives," Col 3, 19. It is true that Eve was the
first to pluck the apple; however, she first sinned by idolatry and
fell from the faith, which faith, as long as it is in the heart,
controls also the body; but when it has departed from the heart, the
body serves sin. Guilt is not peculiar to sex but to sin, which man
has in common with woman.

107. Thus Moses gives an account of the prevailing unrighteousness and
lust. But he gives the reader to understand that, before sin was
committed against the second table of the Law, the first had been
violated, and the Word of God treated with contempt. Otherwise the
sons of God would have obeyed the will of their pious parents
forbidding marriage with those outside the Church.

108. Moses, therefore, concludes that, because the sons of God had
forsaken the worship and Word of God and departed from the precepts of
their parents, thereupon to fall into sensuality and lust, and to take
to wife whom they pleased, they also became violent and appropriated
the goods of others. The world cannot do otherwise. When it has
forsaken God, it worships the devil; when it has despised the Word and
fallen into idolatry, it rushes forth into all sins of passion, in
which fierceness of anger and fierceness of desire by turns are
aroused, and thus all the appetites are thrown into a state of the
greatest disorder. When the righteous reprove this, the result is
resentment and violence against them.

109. The sin of the flood, then, embraces everything that may be
called sin, by the first as well as the second table. Wicked men first
depart from God through unbelief; then they disregard obedience to
parents, and finally become murderers, a