Moreover these Cherubim had not iron wherewith to drive back those who should approach, but LAHAT, that is, "the blaze," or "the flame" of a turning or brandished sword; a flame like the flash of lightning which is uncertain in its motion and dazzles the eyes. This flame or flash of fire has the form of a sword, continually waved or brandished. Just, for instance, as we have it represented that cloven tongues like as of fire appeared resting upon each of the apostles on the day of Pentecost, Acts 2:3. The same appearance do flying dragons also exhibit. In this manner it was also that the angels here spoken of unceasingly emitted flames, which flashed in all directions so that no one might by any possibility approach. The absurdities of Origen on this passage we utterly reject, nor are we at all more pleased with the triflings of Lyra, who will have it, that by the "flaming sword" we are to understand the sinner, who for a sin unto death has ceased to be meritoriously, though not numerically one of the church militant. And he says, that the "flaming sword" being represented as "turning every way" signifies that if true repentance follow such sins a man is deservedly recalled into the church. For ourselves however, as we have all along maintained that paradise was a real and visible garden in a certain spot of the earth, so we explain the present text in a simple and historical sense; that this "sword" was a real and visible "flame" or "a flash of fire" in the form of a sword, by the turnings or brandishings of which every way the Cherubim or angels terrified and drove away Adam and his posterity, so that they dared not approach this garden. And paradise was kept closed by this guard of angels until the Deluge, to the end that there might exist a sure memorial of this miserable and calamitous fall of Adam to all his posterity; in the same manner as in after ages the Lake of Sodom and the pillar of salt remained as memorials throughout the posterity of those generations. And indeed our insensibility and unconcern need such monuments of the wrath of God. After the Deluge however paradise, together with its angels and these brandishings of their sword, disappeared. For each rising generation had its monuments of the divine wrath, which were nearer to them and the better calculated to alarm the self-secure, although even this avails nothing with the wicked.