(100) What is the meaning of the statement, “All the time of man has come against me, because the earth is filled with iniquity?” (#Ge 6:13).{14}{the version given here does not in the least resemble that in our Bible.} Those who resist the order of fate proceed upon these and many other arguments, especially in that of sudden death, which oftentimes produces great slaughter in a short period of time; as, for instance, in the overthrow of houses, in conflagrations, in shipwrecks, in civil tumults, in battles of cavalry, in wars by land and in wars by sea, and in pestilences. To all those who advance arguments of this kind we repeat the same assertions which are here made by the prophet, on the principle which is derived from himself. If indeed that expression, “All the time of man has come against me,” has a meaning of this kind, the term which has been determined as the period of living for all mankind, behold it is now brought to one point and terminated at once by the deluge; and since this is the case, they will not live any longer according to the principle of fate which has been fixed; so that the time of each separate individual is now reduced to one, and has received its destined termination at the same time, by I know not what harmony and periodical revolution of the stars, by which bodies the whole race of mankind is continually preserved or destroyed. Let those, therefore, all receive these things in any manner in which they choose who study these things, and those too who argue against them. Nevertheless we must first of all make this statement, that nothing can be found so contrary to, so opposite to, so wholly repugnant to, the wonderful virtue of the Deity as iniquity; therefore, after he said, “All the time of all mankind has come up against me,” he adds also the reason of its contrariety to him, that the earth is filled with iniquity. In the second place, Time, under the name of Chronos or Saturn, is looked upon as a god by the wickedest of men, who are desirous to lose sight of the one essential Being, on which account he says, “The time of all mankind has come up against me,” because in fact the heathen make human time into a god, and oppose him to the real true God. But, however, it is now insinuated, in other passages also of scripture, which run thus, “Time has departed to a distance from them, but the Lord is in Us:”{15}{#nu 14:9. Compare with this Isaiah 8, #Jer 46:21û28, Psalm 80:16.} just as if he were to say, time is looked upon by wicked men as the cause of the world, but by wise men and virtuous men time is not looked upon in this light, but God only, from whom all times and seasons do proceed. Again, God is the cause, not of all things, but only of good things and good men, and of those men and things which are in accordance with virtue; for as he is free from all wickedness, so likewise he cannot be the cause of it. In the third place, by that expression which he uses in this manner, he indicates the excess of impiety, saying, “that the time of all mankind has arrived,” that is to say, that all men, in every part of the world, have agreed together, with one mind, to work wickedness; but the other assertion which is here made, that the whole earth is filled with iniquity, amounts to this, that there is no part of it whatever free from wickedness, and which is also to receive and to bear righteousness. And the expression, “against me,” establishes the proof of what has been said, inasmuch as it is only the judgment of divine election which is altogether firm and lasting.
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