The Institution of Christian Religion

Now it is a mere trifling, which the Sophisters babble, that §20Christ is the Mediator of redemption, butte the faithful are Mediators of intercession. As though Christ having performed a Mediation for a time, hath given to his servants that eternal Mediatorship which shall never dye. Full courteously ⟨image 303⟩forsooth they handle him, that cut away so little a portion of honour from him. But the Scripture saith far otherwise, with the simplicity whereof a godly man ought to be contented, leaving these deceivers. For where John saith,¹ that if any do sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Christ Jesus: doth he mean that he was ones in old time a patron for us, and not rather assigneth to him an everlasting intercession?² Howe say we to this that Paul also affirmeth, that he sitteth at the right hand of God the Father and maketh intercession for us? And when in an other place he calleth him the only Mediator of God and men: meaneth he not of prayers, of which he had a little before made mention? For when he had before said that intercession must be made for all men: for proof of that saying, he by and by addeth, that of all men there is one God and one Mediator. And none otherwise doth Augustine expound it,³ when he saith thus: Christian men doth mutually commend themselves in their prayers. But he for whom none maketh intercession, but he for all, he is the only and true Mediator. Paul the Apostle, though he were a principal member under the head (yet because he was a member of the body of Christ, and knew that the greatest and truest priest of the church entered, not by a figure, into the inward places, of the veil, to the holy of holy places, but by express and steadfast trueth into the innermost places of heaven,⁴ •o a holiness not shadowish but eternal) commendeth himself also to the prayers of the faithful. Neither doth he make himself a Mediator between the people & God, but prayeth that all the members of the body of Christ should mutually pray for him: because the members are careful one for an other: and if one member suffer, the other suffer with it. And that so the mutual prayers one for an other of all the members yet travailing in earth, may ascend to the head which is gone before into heaven, in whom is appeasement or our since.