In this horrid condition they spent the night, seeing nothing till morning, when their eyes were opened, and they saw the heavens teeming with glaring meteors of flame, which chased each other, as in sport, while others seemed to stand still, looking down on the devoted region below, as if they were endowed with thoughts, and were watching the progress of Lot's escape to the mountains, beyond the plain.
When this was accomplished, and Lot and his family were safe, then began the work of wrath, as if the lightnings of the elements from the four winds of heaven kept holyday, and yet were obedient to the beck of an awful hand, which far up in the gloomy concave was seen in flaming red, pointing them to their courses. Then fell a tempest of fire, mingled with burning brimstone, from the Lord, out of Heaven, destroying not only the great vale of Sodom, but five cities, with hamlets and villages innumerable. So violent and fierce was the fire, that it devoured the very ground in all that region, as it was composed much of a bituminous strata, to a great depth, in which the Jordan flowed and formed the Dead Sea.
Thus disappeared, at one buffet of the Almighty hand, many ten thousands of the lewd race of Ham, in a way the most horrible to think of. There must have been some extraordinary reason for severity so amazing, as it was far more dreadful in its application, than either the curse of Noah, the exterminating decree against the Canaanites in the law of Moses, or their doom to perpetual slavery.
