Master Bezaes sermons upon the three chapters of the canticle of canticlesMaster Bezaes sermons vpon the three chapters of the canticle of canticles

And thus you see how the spirit of error by a just judgement of God hath served his turn with the holy Law of God, for the destruction of men, and all under the shadow of establishing of it and teaching the right use thereof: a thing most miraculous and wonderful, how men could become so brutish as not to suffer a man to touch their sore, so far are they from seeking after or desiring to find or receive a remedy.

And thus you see how the spirit of error by a iust iudgement of God hath serued his turne with the holie Lawe of God, for the destruction of men, and al vnder the shadow of establishing of it and teaching the right vse thereof: a thing most miraculous and wonderfull, how men could become so brutish as not to suffer a man to touch their sore, so far are they from seeking after or desiring to finde or receiue a remedy.

12 But touching the law moral the abuse there of appeareth most strange in this, that there is no one special commandment, which hath not been more openly overturned in Christendom then ever it happened in the synagogue of the Jews, as the reprehension which the law-giver himself maketh, doth witness of them from point to point in saint Matthew chap. 5.6.7. But the fault is yet more dangerous in that, that the use and scope there of is turned upside down. Which thing hath been so much handled by saint Paul, especially in ⟨p. 417⟩the epistle to the Romans and to the Galatians, that it cannot be but an inexcusable reproach unto them who call themselves Christians to dispute of this point any more. In sum, the law showeth us, will we or nil we, what we owe unto God and neighbour, and that no man neither dischargeth, nor is able to discharge his debt in this behalf, being utterly undone and made unpayable by the natural corruption of mankind, which thing notwithstanding neither exempteth him out of debt, nor from the penalty adjoined unto the contract, which is everlasting death. For to think that God renounceth his debt without entire payment made, is to transform God into man. This is then an inexcusable folly to seek after the salvation of the soul by the obligation of death, that is to say in the law moral, which argueth our condemnation, and which can use no other language unto us then his tenor importeth. And yet notwithstanding this is the foundation of the hope given of finding in a mans own merits, or those of an other, (whereof a man may furnish himself for ready money unto the distributer) that which is found, as we will anon declare, in Jesus Christ alone, having satisfied for us, in carrying our sins upon the tree,