ff Noah,
the teacher of righteousness.

84. In our times, at the approach of the day of the Lord, almost the
same condition obtains; we exhort to penitence the papists and our
noblemen; the inhabitants of city and country we admonish not to
continue despising the Word, since God will not leave this unavenged.
But in vain we exert ourselves, as the Scripture says. A few faithful
folk are edified and these are, one by one, gathered away from the
face of sin, and "no man layeth it to heart," as is spoken in Isaiah
57, 1. But when God, in this way, has shaken out the wheat and
gathered the grain in its place, what, think you, shall be the future
of the chaff? Nothing else but to be burned with inextinguishable
fire, Mt 13, 42. This shall be the lot of the world.

85. But the world does not understand how it can be that through the
preaching of the Gospel the wheat should be separated from the chaff,
to be gathered into the barn, while the chaff, that is, the throng of
unbelievers sunk in idolatry and darkness, shall be consigned to the
fire. It is written: "In a day of salvation have I helped thee; and I
will preserve thee," Is 49, 8. Those who will neglect this day of
salvation, will find God as an avenger, for he will not do useless
labor in threshing empty chaff.

86. But the world is flesh; it does not obey. Yea, the nearer and more
immediate the calamity, the more secure it is and the more readily it
despises all faithful admonitions. Though this offense provokes the
righteous, we should, notwithstanding, conclude that God does not
reprove in vain the world through his Holy Spirit, nor that the Holy
Spirit in the righteous is grieved in vain. Christ uses this as an
example when he speaks of the wickedness and heedlessness of our age:
"And as were the days of Noah, so shall be the coming of the Son of
man," Mt 24, 37.

87. It is to be observed here what has been an object of difficulty
for Jerome, that the flood came a hundred years after the birth of
Shem, Ham and Japheth, while here a hundred and twenty years are said
to have been the time of the flood.

B. NOAH AND HIS PREACHING.

1. The time Noah began to preach 87.

2. Why the world took occasion to despise Noah's preaching 88.

* Jerome's reckoning of the 120 years 89.

3. Why Noah married after living so long single, when the world was
to be destroyed 90.

4. How and why Noah was the prophet of prophets and his the
grea