As for the knowledge which
induced the fall, it was, as was touched before, not the natural
knowledge of creatures, but the moral knowledge of good and evil;
wherein the supposition was, that God's commandments or prohibitions
were not the originals of good and evil, but that they had other
beginnings, which man aspired to know, to the end to make a total
defection from God and to depend wholly upon himself.
(7) To pass on: in the first event or occurrence after the fall of
man, we see (as the Scriptures have infinite mysteries, not
violating at all the truth of this story or letter) an image of the
two estates, the contemplative state and the active state, figured
in the two persons of Abel and Cain, and in the two simplest and
most primitive trades of life; that of the shepherd (who, by reason
of his leisure, rest in a place, and lying in view of heaven, is a
lively image of a contemplative life), and that of the husbandman,
where we see again the favour and election of God went to the
shepherd, and not to the tiller of the ground.
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