oly for himself but he was also a confessor; he taught others the
promises and threats of God, and performed and suffered all that
behooves a public personage in an age so exceedingly wicked and
corrupt.

204. If it were I who had seen that so great men in the generation of
the ungodly were opposed to me, I surely in desperation should have
cast aside my ministry. For one cannot conceive how difficult it is
for one man to oppose himself alone to the unanimity of all churches;
to impugn the judgment of the best and most amicable of men; to
condemn them; to teach, to live, and to do everything, in opposition
to them. This is what Noah did. He was inspired with admirable
constancy of purpose, inasmuch as he, innocent before men, not only
regarded the cause of God, but most earnestly pressed it among the
most nefarious men, until he was told: "My spirit shall not further
strive with man." And the word "strive" finely portrays the spirit
with which the ungodly heard Noah instruct them.

205. Peter also beautifully sets forth what it means to walk with God
when he calls Noah a preacher, not of the righteousness of man, but of
God; that is, that of faith in the promised seed. But what reward Noah
received from the ungodly for his message Moses does not indicate. The
statement is sufficient, that he preached righteousness, that he
taught the true worship of God while the whole earth opposed him. That
means the best, most religious and wisest of men were against him.
More than one miracle, in consequence, was necessary to prevent his
being waylaid and killed by the ungodly. We see today how much wrath,
hate, and envy one sermon to the people may create. What shall we
believe Noah may have suffered who taught not a hundred, not two
hundred, but even more years, down to the last century, when God did
not desire the wicked to receive instruction any longer lest they
become still fiercer and more depraved.

206. Therefore we may conjecture from the condition and nature of the
world itself, and of the devil, from the experience of the apostles
and the prophets, and likewise from our own, what a noble example of
patience and other virtues Noah has been, who was just and
irreproachable in that ungodly generation and walked with God--that
is, governed the churches with the Word--and who, when the one hundred
and twenty years were determined upon, after the lapse of which the
world was to be destroyed by a flood, in face of such a ter