The very same evil of pride also is found in private and domestic life. God gives sound health, wife, children, and personal property; not that through these things we should offend him, but that in all such things we might acknowledge his mercy and render him continual thanks. And for this same end also, that we might always give him thanks, he has bestowed upon us the use of and the "dominion" over all his creatures. But how few are there who render unto God the thanks which are thus due to him! Do not almost all of us live in the continual and most shameful abuse of the gifts of God? God therefore is compelled to use in our case the same remedy which the Roman Emperor Vespasian adopted. He used to suffer his citizens to grow rich. For he was accustomed to say, that such rich ones were like a sponge, which when filled with water, if well squeezed, will give back the water in abundance. So when God has enriched certain ones with his bountiful gifts, if they grow ungrateful and abuse the bounty of their God, he squeezes them till they are empty again; as the blessed Virgin says, "And the rich he hath sent empty away." It was for this reason that God did not spare the first-born, Cain. He did not give the first birth-right to Cain, that he might grow proud of it and despise his God; but that he might adorn it, and reverence and fear his God; and when he did not this, God cast him off. And in this matter the sin belonged even to the parents also. They fostered this pride in their first-born as the names they gave their two sons plainly prove. For Adam and Eve placed all their hope in their first-born only. They called him "their treasure," as his name indicates. But Abel they looked upon as nothing and considered that he could do nothing; while they adorned Cain as a king and held him to be the "blessed Seed." From him therefore they promised to themselves great things, and of him they speak great things; and he on his part became filled with pride. But Abel they despised all the time as a man of naught. God however in due time reverses all things. He casts away Cain and makes Abel an angel, and the "first of all the saints." For Abel, when murdered by his brother, was the "first" who was delivered from his sin and from all the calamities of this world, and he shines throughout the whole church to the end of the world as a distinguished star, through that illustrious testimony of "righteousness," which the whole Scriptures bear to his honor. In this manner therefore was Abel, whom Adam, Eve and Cain despised as a man of naught, made in the sight of God a lord of heaven and earth. For after death Abel is placed in a higher state and condition than if he possessed a thousand earthly worlds with all their riches.