d life. Noah was a pious man and a preacher of righteousness,
and had already lived five hundred years, before the flood, when God
commanded him to build an ark,--on which he wrought a hundred years
thereafter; and he led throughout a uniformly godly life. Whence you
may judge what a cross he had to bear, and in what care and anxiety
the pious man stood, when he must needs show, by words and works,
that he was a Christian. For it cannot be allowed that faith should
conceal itself, and not break out before men by words and well-doing.
So this man, alone, perhaps, long before God bade him build the ark,
exercised the preacher's office, and spread the word of God not in
one place, but, beyond doubt, through many lands. So that he must
thus have suffered much and great persecution even, inasmuch as he is
specially (as Peter says) sustained and kept by God, or he would soon
have been overwhelmed and slain; for he must thus needs bear upon
himself much envy and hate, and make even many high, wise and holy
people his enemies. Had the matter not been helped, then the world
would have despised the word of God, and been ever growing more
wicked. When they had now driven on their wickedness to great length,
God said, "My Spirit shall not always strive with men, since they are
flesh; yet will I give them the term of an hundred and twenty years."
Besides, "I will destroy from the earth the men whom I have created,
from man even to the reptile, (I will destroy them)." These words he
preached and enforced daily, and began to build the ark as had been
commanded him; and he labors on it a hundred years. But the people
laughed at him, and were only so much the more obstinate and foolish.
But what the sin was for which God destroyed the world, the text of
Gen. vi. tells us, that the children of God,--that is, those who came
of holy parents, and were instructed and brought up in the faith and
in the knowledge of God, sought after the daughters of men, since
they were fair, and took for their wives whom they would. Thereafter
they came from this to be powerful tyrants, who did everything that
they chose after their own caprice; wherefore God punished the world
and destroyed it by the flood.

V. 6. _And reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes,
overthrowing and condemning them._ This is the third example drawn
from the destruction of those five cities, Gen. xix. Whereof also the
prophet Ezekiel speaks, in chap. xvi., addressing th