§ 1.
As to the causes why God permitted these things so to take place we have rendered them in the former books: and have shewn that all such things are wrought for him who is saved, even man: [God] ripening for immortality that [in him] which hath free will and power of its own, and preparing him to be more meet for everlasting submission unto God. And to this end the Creation is all laid out upon man: for not man for it, but the creature is made for Man. But as to the nations which did not so much as lift up their eyes unto Heaven, nor give thanks to their Maker, nor would see the light of Truth, but are as blind mice hidden in the deep of Folly: justly hath the Word accounted them as a drop from the cask,1 and as the make-weight of the balance and as nothing;2 to be so far useful and meet for the righteous, as the stubble is of use for the growth of the wheat, and the chaff thereof for burning, for the working of gold. And therefore, when in the end the Church shall be suddenly taken up from hence,3 There shall be, saith He, tribulation such as was not from the beginning, neither shall be. For this is the last struggle of the righteous, wherein they who overcome are crowned with incorruption.
§ 2.
And therefore, in the Beast, when he cometh, there ensues a summing up of all iniquity and all deceit;4 that in him all the power of rebellion, running into one and shut up in one, may slip down the furnace of fire. Suitably then will his name also have the number 666: he summing up in himself all the wickedness which was before the Flood, the commixture caused by the Angels’ revolt. I mean that Noe was 600 years old, when the Flood came upon the earth for the blotting out of the rebellion of the earth caused by that most wicked generation which was in the times of Noe:—summing up also all the error which hath been since the flood, devising of idols; and the slaughter of the Prophets; and the burning of the just.5 For the Image of Nabuchodonosor which was set up, was in height sixty cubits and in width six cubits: because of which also Ananias and Azarias and Misael, not adoring it, were cast into the furnace of fire: by that which happened unto them prophesying the burning of the righteous, which is to take place towards the end. For that Image was altogether a prefiguring of the coming of Antichrist, decreeing that he himself alone should be worshipped by all men altogether.
The 600 years then of Noe,6 in whose time the Flood happened because of the Apostasy, and the number of cubits of the Image, on account of which the righteous were thrown into the furnace of fire, signify, as was said, the number of the name, into which number is summed up out of the 6000 years all apostasy, and iniquity, and wickedness, and false prophecy, and deceit, because of which also the Flood of Fire will come on.