On the Posterity of Cain (176-180)

Evil opinions therefore will not come into association with their father, before a great quantity of the unmixed wine of folly has been found upon him, and destroyed any sense that may have previously been in him; for it is written, "They made their father drink wine." So that if they do not give him drink, they will never receive legitimate seed from him while he is sober; but when he has been soaked in wine, and [*]

On which account Moses has separated his impious and obscure progeny from the whole of the divine company; for he says, "The Ammonites and the Moabites shall not come into the assembly of the Lord:" [*] and these are the descendants of the daughters of Lot, supposing that everything is generated of the outward sense and of mind, being male and female like a father and mother, and looking upon this as in real truth the cause of all generation:

but as, even if we were to commit such an error as this, still emerging as it were out of that troubled sea, we may lay hold on repentance, which is a firm and saving thing, and must never let it go till we have completely escaped from the billowy sea, the headlong violence of sin:

as Rachel, when formerly praying for mind, as if that were able to raise up children, and when she received the answer, "Am I equal to God?" [*] attended to what was said to her, and when she understood it, made a most pious recantation; for the recantation of Rachel is recorded in scripture, a most God-loving prayer, "May God grant to me another son," [*] such a prayer as no foolish person is permitted to make, who pursues no object but his own pleasure, and who thinks everything else mere folly and ridiculousness.

And the leader of this opinion is Onan the brother of the skin-wearing Er. "For he," says the scripture, "knowing that the seed would not be his, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, spilled his seed upon the ground:" [*] he transgressed all the boundaries of self-love and of fondness for pleasure.