on to this text to which Moses attaches
special importance as embodying an account of the most noteworthy
event of the primitive world. What fact could possibly inspire more
wonder and admiration than that a man, a corrupt sinner, born of flesh
and blood, as we are, and defiled as we are by that sin and
corruption, so obtained the victory over death as not to die at all!
Christ himself is man, and righteous, yet our sins caused him to
suffer the bitterest of all deaths; but he is delivered on the third
day, and lifts himself up unto life eternal. In Enoch there was the
singular fact that he died not at all, but was caught up, without
death intervening, to the life spiritual and eternal.

69. Emphatically deserving of aversion are the rabbins. The sublimest
passages of the Scriptures they shamefully corrupt. As a case in
point, they prate concerning Enoch that, while he was good and
righteous, he very much inclined toward carnal desires. God,
therefore, out of pity, prevented his sinning and perishing through
death. Is not this, I pray you, a shocking corruption of the text
before us? Why should they say concerning Enoch in particular, that he
was subject to the evil desires of the flesh? As if all the other
patriarchs did not experience the same. Why do they not notice the
repeated testimony of Moses, that Enoch "walked with God"? That is
certainly evidence that Enoch did not indulge those evil inclinations
of his flesh, but bravely overcame them by faith. The Jews when
speaking of the corrupt desires of the flesh have reference to lust,
avarice, pride, and similar promptings. Enoch, however, without doubt,
lived amid mightier temptations than these; like Paul, he felt that
"thorn in the flesh"; day by day he wrestled with Satan; and when, at
length, he was completely bruised and worn out with every kind of
temptation, God commanded him to depart from this life to the blessed
life to come.

70. What that life is which Enoch now lives, we who still continue to
be flesh and blood cannot possibly know. It is enough for us to know
that Enoch was translated in his body. This the patriarchs must have
clearly understood by revelation, and about to die, they needed this
comfort. This much we know also. But what that holy patriarch is now
doing, where he is, and how he lives, we know not. We know that he
lives; and we also know that the life he lives is not like unto this
animal life, but that he is with God. This the text bef