offscouring and lowest filth of humanity, as it were, are living.

18. Now, if God did not spare a world endowed with so many and great
gifts, what have we to hope for, who, offal that we are, are subject
to far greater misfortune and wretchedness? But if it please God,
spare the Roman pontiff and his holy bishops, who do not believe such
things! I now come to my text.

Vs. 1-2. _And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face
of the ground, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God
saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives
of all that they chose._

19. This is a very brief but comprehensive account. The text must not
be understood to mean that the world did not increase until the five
hundredth year of Noah. The more ancient patriarchs are embraced in
this statement. This is demonstrated by the fact that Noah had no
daughters. The reference in the text to "daughters" certainly must be
understood as referring to the by-gone age of Lamech, Methuselah,
Enoch and others. The world, accordingly, was corrupt and evil before
Noah was born, particularly when licentiousness began to prevail after
the death of Adam, whose authority, as the first father, they feared.

20. I have said that Noah was a virgin above all others; I may add he
was the greatest of all martyrs. Our so-called martyrs, compared with
him, have infinite advantage in strength received from the Holy
Spirit, by which death is overcome and all trials and perils are
escaped. Noah lived among the unrighteous for six hundred years, and
like Lot at Sodom, not without numerous and dire perils and trials.

21. This was, perhaps, one reason why Father Lamech gave his son the
name Noah at his birth. When the holy patriarch saw evil abounding in
the world, he entertained the hope concerning his son that he should
comfort the righteous by opposing sin and its author, Satan, and
restoring lost righteousness.

22. However, the wickedness that began then, not only failed to cease
under Noah, but rather grew greater. Hence Noah is the martyr of
martyrs. For is it not much easier to be delivered from all danger and
suffering in a single hour than to live for centuries amid colossal
wickedness?

23. The opinion before expressed I maintain, that Noah abstained from
matrimony so long that he might not be compelled to witness and suffer
in his own offspring what he saw in the descendants of the other
saints. This sigh