have taken place, or that it never will take place. This is also their meaning when they say, all things continue as they were. — j 5 yyeX/a,
the promise) Mockers thus term it, not in respect of themselves, but in mimicry,1 because the righteous earnestly desire the fulfilment of the promise. — avrou, of Him ) Of the coming Lord, whom they dis- dain to mention by name. — dtp rig) (^/xepas), from the day in which. — o i narsp eg, the fathers) who rested their hopes on the promise. — ndvra, all things) the heaven, the water, the earth. — ouru, thus) An adverb of pregnant meaning ; that is, thus continue, as they do continue. — an apyfg xr'ns eug, from the beginning of the creation ) These mockers at any rate confess, that the world did not exist from eternity.
5. Auvddvsi yap, for it escapes their notice) This is the reason why they thus speak. Antithetical to, let it not escape your notice , ver. 8. — rovroy this) The nominative case. — 6e\ovrag) willing it to be so. Their ignorance is voluntary. They obstinately neglect to consider the deluge. — ovpavoi — the heavens — the earth) The heavens and the earth before the deluge were very different in quality, though not in substance, from their present state. — riffa v sWaXa /) had beeny of oldy just as they are now. The deluge, and the destruction of the world by fire, Peter says, might have appeared equally incredible : and yet the former event has taken place, and the latter will take place. Just as the mockers were arguing against the destruction of the world by fire, so before the deluge men might have argued against the deluge. But as the argument of these last was proved to be groundless by the testimony of the event, so also is the argu- ment of the former. The urgency of the reasoning derived from the deluge destroys the force of the thus , as they were (ovru), of the mockers, ver. 4. The pluperfect has a backward reference from the time of the deluge to the time of the creation : and the word then , ver. 6, has also a reference to that. — eg vdccrog x.a i d? vdarogy out of the water and by the water) A gradual process. The water had covered the earth : the earth emerged out of the waters ; and the water was serviceable for the stability of the earth, as the Creator formed and placed it. Water is in other cases lighter than earth, and earth seeks the lower parts, to such a degree, that all water in a straight line from the surface to the centre of this globe, or round system, always has earth beneath it : but on the surface itself, the earth everywhere rises above the water in a greater or less degree ; and even this place the water yielded and left to the earth, as it
1 See Append, on Mimesis. — E.