ld's
punishment 102.

B. NOAH.

V. 32. _And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham,
and Japheth._

86. Here again we meet with surprising brevity. As is his custom,
Moses expresses in the fewest possible words the greatest and most
important things, which the ignorant reader passes by unobserved. But
you will say, perhaps, Of what import is it that Noah first begat sons
when he was five hundred years old? Why, if Noah had no children all
those 500 years, he either endured that length of time the severe
trial of unfruitfulness or, as appears to me more likely, he abstained
from marriage all those years, setting an example of most marvelous
chastity. I do not speak here of the abominable chastity of the
Papists; nor of our own. Look at the prophets and the apostles, and
even at some of the other patriarchs, who doubtless were chaste and
holy. But what are they in comparison with this man Noah, who,
possessed of masculine vigor, managed to live a chaste life without
marriage for five hundred years?

87. Now you will scarcely find one in a thousand among the men of our
age who, at the age of thirty, has not known woman. Moreover, Noah,
after he had lived a single life for so many centuries, at length took
to himself a wife, and begat children; which latter fact carries its
own proof that he was in a state appropriate for marriage prior to
this, and had a definite reason for practicing continence.

88. In the first place, it is evident that such unequaled chastity
must necessarily have been a peculiar gift of God. It evinced a nature
almost angelic. It does not seem a thing possible in the nature of man
to live 500 years without knowing a wife. In the next place these five
centuries of chastity in Noah manifest some signal displeasure with
the world. For what other reason are we to conclude that he abstained
from marriage than because he had seen the descendants of his uncle
and aunt degenerate into giants and tyrants, filling the world with
violence? He thought in consequence, that he would rather have no
children at all than such as those. And my belief is that he would
never have taken to himself a wife at all if he had not been
admonished and commanded so to do either by the patriarchs or by some
angel. He who had refrained from marriage for 500 years might have
refrained during all the rest of his life.

89. In this manner Moses explains in brief words exceedingly weighty
facts, an