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It is difficult to discover from Scripture, whether, after the
deluge, traces of the holy city are continuous, or are so interrupted
by intervening seasons of godlessness, that not a single worshipper of
the one true God was found among men; because from Noah, who, with
his wife, three sons, and as many daughters-in-law, achieved
deliverance in the ark from the destruction of the deluge, down to
Abraham, we do not find in the canonical books that the piety of any
one is celebrated by express divine testimony, unless it be in the case
of Noah, who commends with a prophetic benediction his two sons Shem
and Japheth, while he beheld and foresaw what was long afterwards to
happen. It was also by this prophetic spirit that, when his middle
son, that is, the son who was younger than the first and older than
the last born, had sinned against him, he cursed him not in his own
person, but in his son's (his own grandson's), in the words,
"Cursed be the lad Canaan; a servant shall he be unto his
brethren." Now Canaan was born of Ham, who, so far from covering
his sleeping father's nakedness, had divulged it. For the same
reason also he subjoins the blessing on his two other sons, the oldest
and youngest, saying, "Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and
Canaan shall be his servant. God shall gladden Japheth, and he
shall dwell in the houses of Shem." And so, too, the planting of
the vine by Noah, and his intoxication by its fruit, and his
nakedness while he slept, and the other things done at that time, and
recorded, are all of them pregnant with prophetic meanings, and veiled
in mysteries.
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