[52] Thus whoever will carefully examine the nature of the particular enactments will find that they seek to attain to the harmony of the universe and are in agreement with the principles of eternal nature.
[53] Therefore all those to whom God thought fit to grant abundance of the good gifts of bodily well-being and of good fortune in the shape of wealth and other externals—who then rebelled against virtue, and, freely and intentionally under no compulsion, practised knavery, injustice and the other vices, thinking to gain much by losing all, were counted, Moses tells us, as enemies not of men but of the whole heaven and universe, and suffered not the ordinary, but strange and unexampled punishments wrought by the might of justice, the hater of evil and assessor of God. For the most forceful elements of the universe, fire and water, fell upon them, so that, as the times revolved, some perished by deluge, others were consumed by conflagration. The seas lifted up their waters,
[54] and the rivers, spring-fed and winter torrents, rose on high and flooded and swept away all the cities of the plain, while the continuous and ceaseless streams of rain by night and day did the same for the cities of the uplands.
[55] At a later time, when the race sprung from the remnant had again increased and become very populous, since the descendants did not take the fate of their forefathers as a lesson in wisdom, but turned to deeds of licence and followed eagerly still more grievous practices, He determined to destroy them with fire. Then, as the oracles declare,
[56] the lightnings poured from heaven and consumed the impious and their cities, and to the present day the memorials to the awful disaster are shewn in Syria, ruins and cinders and brimstone and smoke, and the dusky flame still arises as though fire were smouldering within.
[57] But while in these disasters the impious were chastised with the said punishments, it was also the case that those who stood out in excellence of conduct fared well and received the rewards which their virtue deserved.
[58] While the rush of the flaming thunderbolts consumed the whole land, and the inhabitants to boot, one man alone, an immigrant, was saved by God’s protecting care, because he had shewn no liking for any of the misdeeds of the country, though immigrants, to secure themselves, usually shew respect for the customs of their hosts, knowing that disrespect for these entails danger at the hands of the original inhabitants. Yet he did not reach the summit of wisdom, nor was it because of the perfection of his nature that he was deemed worthy of this great privilege, but because he alone did not fall in with the multitude, when they turned aside to licentious living and fed every pleasure and every lust with lavish supplies of fuel like a flame when the brushwood is piled upon it.