ded the other, special
faith, that he believed God as regards both the threatened destruction
of the rest of the world and the salvation promised to Noah himself
and his sons. Beyond a doubt, to this faith his grandfather Methuselah
and his father Lamech earnestly incited him; for it was as difficult
to so believe as it was for the Virgin Mary to believe that none but
herself was to be the mother of the Son of God.

99. This faith taught him to despise the presumption of the world
which derided him as a man in his dotage. This faith prompted him
diligently to continue the building of the ark, a work those giants
probably ridiculed as extreme folly. This faith made Noah strong to
stand alone against the many evil examples of the world, and to
despise most vehemently the united judgment of all others.

100. But almost unutterable and miraculous is this faith, burdened as
it is with strange and most weighty obstacles, which the Holy Spirit
shows in passing, without going into great detail, that we may be
induced to meditate the more diligently upon its circumstances.
Consider first the great corruption of the age. While the Church had
before this time many and most holy patriarchs, it was now deprived of
such rulers; Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch are all
dead, and the number of patriarchs is reduced to three--Methuselah,
Lamech and Noah. These alone are left at the time the decree
concerning the destruction of the world is published. These three are
compelled to witness and suffer the incredible malice of men, their
idolatry, blasphemy, violent acts, foul passions, until finally
Methuselah and Lamech are also called out of this life. There Noah was
the only one to oppose the world rushing to destruction, and to make
an effort to preserve righteousness and to repress unrighteousness.
But far from meeting with success, he had to see even the sons of God
lapse into wickedness.

101. This ruin and havoc of the Church troubled the righteous man and
all but broke his heart, as Peter says of Lot in Sodom, 2 Pet 2, 8.
Now, if Lot was so distracted and vexed by the wickedness of one
community, how must it have been with Noah, against whom not only the
generation of Cain raged, but who was opposed also by the decadent
generation of the patriarchs, and then even by his own father's house,
his brothers, sisters, and the descendants of his uncles and aunts?
For all these were corrupted and estranged from the fait