[46] When such numbers then of such mighty evils had burst forth which that time poured out—for all the portions of the world, except the heaven itself, were moved in an unnatural manner—as if they were stricken with a terrible and deadly disease. And one house alone, that of the aforesaid just and God-loving man who had received the two highest of all gifts, was preserved; one gift being, as I have said already, the not being destroyed with all the rest of mankind, the other that of becoming himself, at a subsequent period, the founder of a new generation of mankind; for God thought him worthy to be both the end of our race and the beginning of it, the end of those men who lived before the deluge, and the beginning of those who lived after the deluge.