The Institution of Christian Religion

Moreover where he assigneth the chief government to the tribe §7of Judah in the person of the Patriarch Jacob, who can deny that this was done by spirit of prophecy,¹ specially if we weigh in consideration the thing it self, how in coming to pass it proved true? Imagine Moses to have ben the first author of this prophecy: yet from the time that he did first put it in writing, there passed four hundred years wherein there was no mention of the sceptre in the tribe of Judah. After Saul was consecrate king, it seemed that the kingdom should rest in the tribe of Benjamin.² When David was anointed by Samuel, what reason appeared there why the course of inheritance of the kingdom should be changed? who would have looked that there should have come a king out of the base house of a herdsman? And when there were in the same house seven brethren, who would have said that that honour should light upon the youngest? By what mean came he to hope to be a king? who can say that this anointment was governed by any art, travail or policy of man, & not rather that it was a fulfilling of the heavenly prophecy? Likewise those things that Moses afore speaketh, albeit darkly, concerning the Gentiles to be adopted into the covenant of God, seeing they came to pass almost two thousand years ⟨p. 18⟩after, do they not make it plain that he spake by the inspiration of God. I overskip his other tellings aforehand of things, which do so evidently savour of the revelation of God, that all men that have their sound wit may plainly perceive that it is God that speaketh.³ To be short, that same one song of his, is a clear looking glass, wherein God evidently appeareth.

Moreouer where he assigneth the chiefe gouernement to the tribe §7of Iuda in the persone of the Patriarch Iacob, who can denye that this was doone by spirite of prophecie,¹