is connection.

(1) Allegories are not to have a world-wide treatment like
the articles of faith 128.

(2) Defects in the allegories of the fathers 129-130.

* Lyra is to be preferred to all commentators 131.

(3) Right use of allegories 132.

B. ALLEGORIES IN DETAIL.

82. Writing to the Corinthians, Paul says (1 Cor 10, 2) that the
Israelites "were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea."
If you regard only the outward circumstance and the words, even
Pharaoh was baptized, but he perished with his men, while Israel
passed through safe and unharmed. Noah and his sons were saved in this
baptism of the flood, while all the rest of the world, being outside
of the ark, perished thereby. Such a way of speaking is appropriate
and forcible. "Baptism" and "death" are interchangeable in Scripture.
Paul says (Rom 6, 3): "All we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were
baptized into his death," and Jesus says, "I have a baptism to be
baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" (Lk
12, 50). And to his disciples he said, "Ye shall ... be baptized with
the baptism that I am baptized with" (Mt 20, 23).

83. In this sense the Red Sea was a baptism indeed. It represented to
Pharaoh death and God's anger. Yet though Israel was baptized with the
same baptism, they passed through it unharmed. So the flood is truly
death and the wrath of God, and yet, the faithful are saved in the
midst of the flood. Death engulfs and swallows all mankind; for, the
wrath of God smites both the good and the bad, the pious and the
wicked, without distinction. The flood was sent upon Noah the same as
upon the rest of the world. The Red Sea that engulfed Pharaoh was the
same as that through which Israel passed unharmed. But in both cases
the believers are saved while the wicked perish. That is the point of
difference. The ark was Noah's salvation, and it was but an expression
of the promise and Word of God. In these he had life, but the wicked,
who believed not the Word, were left to perish.

84. This is the difference which the Holy Spirit desired to bring out,
so that the righteous, warned by this example, might believe and hope
for salvation through the mercy of God in the very midst of death.
They consider baptism as bound together with the promise of life, as
Noah did the ark. Therefore, though the wise man and the fool must
suffer the same death--for Peter and