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Rh God and euerie liuing soule of al flesh which is vpon the earth. And God said to Noe: This shal be the signe of the couenant, which I established, betwen me & al flesh of the earth. The sonnes therfore of Noe, that came out of the arke, were Sem, Cham, and Iaphet: and Cham he is the father of Chanaan. These three are the sonnes of Noe: and ∷ of these was al mankind spred ouer the whole earth.

And Noe a husbandman began to til the grounde, and planted a vineyard. And drinking of the wine was made ″ drunke, and naked in his tabernacle. Which when Cham the father of Chanaan, had seene, to wit that his fathers priuities were bare, he told it to his two bretheren abroad. But in dede Sem and Japheth put a cloake vpon their shoulders, and going backward, couered the priuities of their father: and their faces were turned away, and they sawe not their fathers priuities. And Noe awaking from the wine, when he had learned what his younger sonne had done to him, he said: ″ Cursed be Chanaan, a seruant of seruantes shal he be vnto his bretheren. And he said: Blessed be the Lord God of Sem, Chanaan be his seruant. ″ God enlarge Iapheth, and dwel he in the tabernacles of Sem, and Chanaan be his seruant. And Noe liued after the floud three hundred fiftie yeares. And al his dayes were in the whole nyne hundred fiftie yeares: and he died.

ANNOTATIONS. IX.

3 Al that moueth] S. Iustinus Martyr, S. Chrisostom, and other ancient Doctors proue, that flesh was lawful to be eaten before the floud: but being not necessarie, because men were stronger, and other things also of more force, the better sorte which were of Seths race abstained from it. But after the floud flesh being more necessarie, God altereth that custome of abstinence, with this limitation and commandment, that they shal not eate bloud.

4. Flesh with bloud] Though this positiue precept, of not eating bloud, serued wel to make men more abhorre manslaughter (which is forbid by the law of nature, and the reuenge therof here and in other places seuerly threatned) yet it was specially geuen both immediatly after the floud, and in the law of Moyses (with manie the like) to exercise men in obedience. And the same was renewed, for a time, by the Apostles, to appease a controuersie in the primitiue Church. For that the Iewes conuerted to Christ, hauing benne long accustomed to this obseruation, could not indure to see it broken, by themselues, or other Christians, and being no great burden, for the Gentiles, it was