Genesis 19:31

But I think the purpose of his daughters also must be more carefully considered, lest perhaps they too deserve to receive not so much blame as is supposed. For Scripture relates that they said to one another: "Our father," it says, "is old, and there is no one upon the earth to come in to us, as befits all the earth. Come and let us make our father drunk with wine and let us sleep with him and raise up seed from our father." As far as concerns the things which Scripture says about them, it seems in some way to make satisfaction even on their behalf. For it appears that the daughters of Lot had learned certain things about the consummation of the world which was to threaten through fire, but, being girls, they had not learned it wholly and perfectly; they did not know that, when the regions of Sodom were laid waste by fire, much space still remained untouched in the world. They had heard that at the end of the age the earth and all the elements were to be boiled away by the burning of fire. They saw the fire, they saw the sulphurous flames, they saw all things laid waste. They saw too that their own mother had not been saved; they suspected that some such thing had happened as they had heard of in the times of Noah, and that they alone had been preserved with their parent for the restoring of the posterity of mortals. They therefore conceive a desire for the recovery of the human race and suppose that from themselves must be given the beginning of restoring the age. And although the stealing of intercourse with their father seemed to them a great crime, yet a graver impiety seemed to them to be, if by keeping their chastity they should destroy the hope, as they thought, of human posterity. For this reason, therefore, they enter upon a plan with less blame, as I judge, though with a greater hope and reasoning: they soften and dissolve their father's sadness or sternness with wine. Entering on separate nights, each singly receives conception from the man who is unaware; they do not repeat it further, they do not seek it again. Where here is the fault of lust, where is the crime of incest shown to be? How shall that be attributed to vice which is not repeated in the deed? I fear to speak out what I feel; I fear, I say, lest the incest of these women may have been chaster than the chastity of many. Let women placed in marriages examine and question themselves,…