On the other hand there is no doubt that they exhorted their children to live in the fear of God, that they might console themselves with the confidence of his goodness toward them; assuring them that if they did so, they would attain to a better state after this present life. And who could enumerate all the blessings of that former life, which they had originally enjoyed! To all their teaching was added that other branch of doctrine concerning the promise of the Seed of the woman, and of the great deliverance from all calamities to come. And most probably these God-fearing parents preached all these things to their children in a certain place, and especially on the Sabbath days. And it was doubtless by being stirred to do so by these sermons, that the children came to offer their sacrifices and to render unto God his worship. PART II. OFFERINGS IN GENERAL, OF OUR FIRST PARENTS, AND OF CAIN AND ABEL. I. Now this is the first passage of the Scripture in which mention is made of MINCHA, _or_ "an offering," from which it plainly appears that the custom of sacrificing and offering victims is no recent thing, but a practice which has existed from the beginning of the world. It is no wonder therefore that the offering of sacrifices, which had been a custom handed down from Adam to Moses, as from hand to hand, should at length have been reduced by Moses into its own peculiar forms and into a certain order; all those things being rejected and repudiated, doubtless many, which the vain superstition of men had added to the original manner of sacrificing. Such additions are seen in the examples furnished by the heathen sacrifices, contained in Homer and Virgil, which sacrifices the heathen nations no doubt received from the primeval fathers, but which they multiplied and encumbered with many things through their superstition. And while I am dwelling on the present passage, let the reader first of all consider with me that Adam and Eve are not parents only, nor is it their sole care to feed their children and to rear them for this present life. They hold the offices and perform the duties of priests also. And because they are filled with the Holy Ghost and illuminated with the knowledge of Christ who was to come, they set this great hope of their future deliverance before their children also, and exhort them to show forth their gratitude to the God of such infinite mercy. For it is to be received as a sure fact, that the end of all the sacrifices which have been handed down to us from the beginning was none other than to set forth this _great hope!_