CAIN, the first-born of Adam and Eve. His history, as recorded in the book of i Genesis, is mysterious and inexplicable, and the traditions which a later superstition has gathered round it, have thrown no light whatever on its dark perplexity. As the first murderer, his memory has always been profoundly execrated by the Christian church; yet such is the perversity of human nature, that one sect—if not more—of the pseudo Gnostics found his actions and character so much to their liking, that they called them selves Catnaes (130 A.D.), and invented an explanation of his alleged crime, which, like most of the Gnostic heresies in the early church, sprang out of the deep-rooted funda mental error of the " two principles." The Caiuites believed that C. was the offspring of the intercourse of a superior power with Eve, and Abel of an inferior power; that their characters corresponded to their paternal parentage, and that the slaying of Abel only symbolized the victory of the superior over the inferior power. The subsequent pun
ishments of C. were regarded as the persecutions of Abel's father—i.e., the Jewish God. For the same reason, they highly honored all the reprobates of the Old Testament—such as the people of Sodom, Esau, Borah, Dathan, and Abiram—whom they looked upon as the victims of the hatred of Jehovah. It is unfortunate that we possess only distorted and fragmentary accounts of this, as of all the other heretical sects. The Cainites are also said to have denied the dogma of the resurrection of the body, to have rejected the New Testament, and accepted a gospel of Judas, the betrayer, whom they also reverenced for the singular reason that his crime, by procuring the death of Christ, secured the salva tion of men.