sons. And Adam lived after he had begotten Seth eight hundred years, and
engendered sons and daughters. Some hold opinion thirty sons and thirty
daughters, and some fifty of that one and fifty of that other. We find
no certainty of them in the Bible. But all the days of Adam living here
in earth amount to the sum of nine hundred and thirty years. And in the
end of his life when he should die, it is said, but of none authority,
that he sent Seth his son into Paradise for to fetch the oil of mercy,
where he received certain grains of the fruit of the tree of mercy by an
angel. And when he came again he found his father Adam yet alive and
told him what he had done. And then Adam laughed first and then died.
And then he laid the grains or kernels under his father's tongue and
buried him in the vale of Hebron; and out of his mouth grew three trees
of the three grains, of which trees the cross that our Lord suffered his
passion on was made, by virtue of which he gat very mercy, and was
brought out of darkness into very light of Heaven. To the which he bring
us that liveth and reigneth God, world without end.




HERE BEGINNETH THE HISTORY OF NOAH

_The First Sunday in Sexagesima_


After that Adam was dead, died Eve and was buried by him. At the
beginning, in the first age, the people lived long. Adam lived nine
hundred and thirty years, and Methuselah lived nine hundred and
sixty-nine years. S. Jerome saith that he died the same year that the
flood was. Then Noah was the tenth from Adam in the generation of Seth,