And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years.
Ver. 28, 29. And Noah lived after the flood, &c.] This man, if ever any that was born of a woman, had a long life, and full of misery. Job 14:1 He saw the tenth generation after him before his death. But, oh, how oft was he occasioned to get under the juniper-tree with Elias, and desire to die! Before the flood, what a deal of wickedness and disorder beheld he in family, Church, and commonwealth; and all this punished by the deluge, to his unspeakable heart-break! Soon after he was mocked by his own son, and despised by almost all the rest of his posterity; whose unheard-of hardiness in building the tower of Babel, he was nolens volens, forced to see and suffer; and then shortly after, the confusion of tongues as their just punishment. What should I speak of their so many and so great cruelties, insolences, tyrannical usurpations, effusions of innocent blood, wars, stirs, strifes, superstitions, and abominable idolatries, under Nimrod, Jupiter, Belus, Semiramis, Zoroaster (the magic master), and other Emims and Zamzummims of the earth! Of all which, and a great deal more, this good old patriarch was, to his sorrow, not only an ear but an eye-witness. All which considered, it must needs be granted, that living so long, never any martyr, or other out of hell, suffered more misery than Noah did. a And the like may be said of Athanasius, of whom Master Hooker witnesseth, that for the space of forty-six years, from the time of his consecration to succeed Alexander Archbishop of Alexandria, till the last hour of his life in this world, his enemies never suffered him to enjoy the comfort of a peaceable day. Was not he to be reckoned a martyr, though he died in his bed? Cur verear Chrysostomum appellare Martyrem ? saith Erasmus. b And why may not any man say as much of Luther? &c.
a Vix mihi persuadeo virum ex homine miseriorem natum fuisse quam Noah. - Funccii Chron., fol. 17.
b Erasm. in Vita Chrysost .