A Practical Commentary on the Epistle of Jude

2. Their sin is specified [giving themselves over to fornication and going after strange flesh.] Here are two great sins charged upon them. 1. The first is [giving themselves over to fornication▪ ] [Greek or Hebrew], the word is unusual, and therefore diversly rendered. One translation, [defiles themselves with fornication] the vulgar, •x fornicatae, as noting the strangeness and abominableness of their lust, but that is implied in the next expression, our translation fitly rendereth it by such a phrase as signifieth their excess and vehement addictedness to unclean practices. 2. The next fin is [going after strange flesh] 'Tis a modest and covert expression, implying their monstrous and unlawful lusts, contrary to the course and institution of nature, a filthiness scarce to be named, from them called Sodomies; the Apostle Paul expresseth it thus, Rom 1. 27. Leaving the natural use of the Woman they b••ned in their lust •ne towards another, men with men working that which is unsce•ly. 'Tis called here [strange flesh] [Greek or Hebrew] ▪ other flesh, as being other then what nature hath appointed, or because 'tis impossible that man and man in that execrable Act should make one flesh, as man and woman do. 3. Their judgement is set down [suffering the vengeance of eternal fire] Sodom we know and the Cities round about it were consumed by fire and brimstone rained down from Heaven; which though a dreadful, was but a temporal fire: in what sense doth the Apostle call it here eternal life? some to mollify the seeming austerity of the phrase, read thus, [were made an example of eternal fire suffering vengeance] that is, in that judgement which was executed upon them. God would give the world a Type and Figure of Hell. Others by eternal fire? understand the duration of the effects of the first temporal punishment; the soil thereabout wearing the marks of Gods curse to this day. Others not much differing from the former: by eternal fire understand ⟨p. 324⟩an utter destruction▪ and labour to evince it from the use of the phrase in a like sense, and the parallel place in Peter,