16. Demonstration. It is established by more than one example that the sins of men have been punished by God with fire. God exercised his vengeance upon the Sodomites with fire:1 “Therefore the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven.” Nadab and Abihu, offering incense with profane fire, were consumed by heavenly fire:2 “And fire coming forth from the Lord devoured them, and they died before the Lord.” Two captains of fifty sent to Elijah are burned with their soldiers by fire sent down from heaven:3 “Behold, fire came down from heaven and devoured the two captains of fifty … and the fifty men who were with them.” Peter, however, testifies4 that “the day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which the heavens shall pass away with great violence, but the elements shall be dissolved with heat, and the earth and the works which are in it shall be burned up.”
Nothing, therefore, is more evident from the analogy of the Scriptures than that God has been accustomed to take punitive action against the impious by fire and to employ fire as an instrument by which he exercises his justice. Since, therefore, it is repeated so often and in such various manners that the reprobate are punished by fire, thrust into a furnace of fire, and burned by flames, who would tolerate metaphorical interpretations being obtruded after the proper sense has been neglected? Those who act thus conflict with the analogy of the Scriptures and must be called not interpreters but corrupters.