Quod Deterius Potiori Insidiari Soleat

On which account we read in a subsequent passage, "Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and slew him." [*](Genesis iv. 8. ) For according to the first imagination, he suggests the idea that Abel has been killed. But if you look at it according to the most accurate investigation, you will see that the intimates that Cain himself was slain by himself, so that we ought to read it thus: "Cain rose up and killed himself," and not the other.

And very reasonably may we attribute this to him. For the soul, which destroys out of itself the virtue-loving and God-loving principle, has died as to the life of virtue, so that Abel (which appears a most paradoxical assertion) both is dead and alive. He is dead, indeed, having been slain by the foolish mind, but he lives according to the happy life which is in God. And the holy oracle which has been given will bear witness, which expressly says, that he cried out loudly, and betrayed clearly by his cries [*](Genesis iv. 10. ) what he had suffered from the concrete evil, that is from the body. For how could one who no longer existed have conversed?