Lots deliuerance: Sodomes destruction: Abimelechs lust, Sarahs chastity. CHAP. 30.
AFter this promise was Lot deliuered out of Sodome, and the whole territory of that wicked citty consumed by a shower (a) of fire from heauen: and all those parts where masculine bestiality was as allowable by custome as any other act is by other lawes. Besides, this punishment of theirs was a type of the day of iudgement: and what doth the angells forbidding them to looke backe, signifie, but that the regenerate must neuer returne to his old courses, if hee meane to es∣cape the terror of the last iudgment? Lots wife, where she looked back, there was * 1.1 she fixed, and beeing turned into (b) a piller of salt, serueth to season the hearts of the faithful, to take heed by such example. After this, Abraham did with his wife Sarah at Geraris, in King Abimelechs court, as hee had done before in Egipt, and her chastity was in like maner preserued, & she returned to her husband. Where * 1.2 Abraham when the King chideth him for concealing that shee was his wife, ope∣ned his feare, and withal, told him, saying, she is my sister indeed for she is my fathers daughter but not my mothers, and she is my wife: and so shee was indeed both these, and withall of such beauty, that she was amiable euen at those years.
L. VIVES.
A Shower (a) of fire] Of this combustion many prophane authors make mention Strabo saith that cities were consumed by that fire as the inhabitāts thereabout report: the poole that remaineth where Sodome stood (the chiefe city) is sixty furlongs about. Many of thē also mention the lake Asphalts where the bitumen groweth. (b) Apiller] Iosephus saith he did see it.