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THE UNIVERSAL REFORMATION. 57
find that when the world was formerly sunk into the same
disorders, it was God's care that did help it by sending a
universal deluge to raze mankind,
full of abominable and
incorrigible vice, from off the world. And, gentlemen,
when a man sees the walls of his house all gaping and
ruinous, and its foundations so weakened that, in all
appearance, it is ready to fall, certainly it is more wisely
done to pull down the house and build it anew, then to
lose money and time in piecing and patching it. There-
fore, since man's life is so foully depraved
with vice that
it is past all human power to restore it to its former health,
I do with all my heart beseech the Divine Majestic, and
counsel you to do the like, that He will again open the
cataracts of Heaven, and pour down upon the earth another
deluge, with this restriction, that a new Ark may be made,
wherein all boys not above twelve years of age may be
saved, and that all the female sex, of whatsoever age, be so
wholly consumed, that nothing but their unhappy memory
may remain. And I beseech the same Divine Majestic
that as He hath granted the singular benefit to bees, fishes,
beetles, 1 and other animals, to procreate 4'
with out the female
sex, so He will think men worthy of the like favour. I
have learnt for certain that as long as there shall be any
women in the world men will be wicked."
It is not to be believed how much Gate's discourse dis-
pleased the whole Assembly, who did all so abhor the harsh
conceit of a deluge, that, casting themselves upon the
ground, with their hands held up to heaven, they humbly
beseeched Almighty God that He would preserve the
excellent female sex, that He would keep mankind from
any more deluges,
or that He would send them on the
1 See Additional Note, No. 3.