A commentary on the whole Epistle to the Hebrews. By M. John Calvin. Translated…A commentarie on the vvhole Epistle to the Hebrevves. By M. Iohn Caluin. Translated…

For the Lord correcteth him whom he loveth.] Vers. 6 This reason seems not to be very firm. Objection. For God doth indifferently punish the reprobates as well as the elect: and his rods do oftener declare his wrath than his love. For the holy Scripture on the one side so speaks: and experience on the other side confirms it. Answer. But when the word of God is directed to the faithful, then we must not wonder if it only speak of this use, and fruit of chastisements which they feel. For howsoever God shows himself to be a severe & angry Judge against the reprobates as oft as he punisheth them; yet he respects none other end in correcting his chosen, ¹but thereby to provide for their salvation: which undoubtedly is a sign of his fatherly good will. Moreover, because the reprobates know not that they are governed by the hand of God, they therefore think most an end that they are afflicted by chance. As if a rebellious child, forsaking his fathers house, should get himself a great way off, and there become a vagabond, and should there feel the smart of hunger and cold, or other poverties: this indeed were a worthy punishment which he well deserved for his folly, that so he might learn to his costs what it is to disobey a good father: and yet notwithstanding he would not for all this acknowledge that this were a fatherly correction. So the unbelievers, although they are, as you would ⟨p. 293⟩say, given over, and banished from God, & from his house, yet they perceive not that it is the hand of God that toucheth them. Let us remember then that we cannot otherwise feel the love of God towards us in the middest of his rods and chastisements, unless we be well persuaded, that they are so many fatherly corrections and scourges, by which God chastiseth us for our sins. But there can nothing of all this come into the minds of the reprobates, ²because they are of fugitive spirits: that is to say, they care for nothing, but that they may have always their swing, and might never be drawn into Gods presence, to appear before him: add yet hereunto that judgement must begin at the house of God, 1. Pet. 4.17. Wherefore, howsoever God do indifferently punish as well the strangers as his own household;