continually pray for it.

15. As the first world was most corrupt, it was thus subject to
terrible punishment. Adults perished who provoked God to anger by
their wicked deeds, also those of an innocent age, who had knowledge
and were unable to distinguish between their right hand and their
left. Many, doubtless, were deceived by their own guilelessness; but
God's wrath does not discriminate, it falls upon and destroys alike
adults and infants, the crafty and the guileless.

16. This awful punishment appears to have moved even the Apostle
Peter. Like one besides himself, he uses words which we today are not
able to understand. He says: Christ, having been made alive in the
Spirit, also "went and preached unto the spirits in prison, that
aforetime were disobedient, when the long suffering of God waited in
the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is,
eight souls, were saved through water," etc. (1 Pet 3, 19-20).

17. A strange declaration, and an almost fanatical saying, by which
the Apostle describes this event! By these words, Peter assures us
that there was a certain unbelieving world to whom the dead Christ
preached after their death. If this is true, who would doubt that
Christ took Moses and the prophets with him to those who were fettered
in prison, in order to change the unbelieving world into a new and
believing one? This seems to be intimated by Peter's words, though I
should not like to make this assertion authoritatively.

18. But doubtless those whom he calls an unbelieving world were not
the wicked despisers of his Word nor the tyrants. If they were
overwhelmed in their sins, these were certainly condemned. The
unbelieving world of which he speaks seems rather to be the children
and those whose lack of judgment precluded belief. These were at that
time, seized and carried away headlong to their destruction, by the
offenses of the world, as if in the power of a rapid stream, only
eight souls being saved.

19. In this way does Peter magnify the awful intensity of God's wrath.
At the same time he praises his long-suffering in that he did not
deprive those of the Word of salvation who at the time did not or
could not believe because they hoped in the patience of God and would
not be convinced that he would visit such fearful and universal
punishment upon the world.

20. How this came to pass is beyond our understanding. We know and
believe that God is wonderful in all his works a