The Institution of Christian Religion

We are not yet come beyond Moses: Which (as these men say) had no other office, but to persuade the carnal people to worship God by the fruitfulness of the ground and plenty of all things. And yet (unless a man will flee the light that willingly offereth it self) there is already a plain declaration of the spiritual covenant. But if we come down to the Prophets, there with most full brightness both the life everlasting and the kingdom of Christ do utter themselves. And first of all David, which as he was before the other in time, so according to the order of Gods distribution, he showed the heavenly mysteries in shadows more darkly than the rest, yet with what plainness & certainty directeth he all his sayings to that end? How he esteemed the earthly dwelling,¹ this sentence testifieth: I am here a foreigner & stranger, as all my fathers were. Every living man is vanity, every one walketh about as a shadow. But now what is my expectation, Lord? even to thee is my hope. Truly he that confessing that in the ⟨p. 73⟩earth there is nothing sound or steadfast, keepeth still a steadfastness of hope in God, considereth his felicity laid up in an other place. To such consideration is he wont to call all the faithful, so oft as he meaneth to comfort them truly. For in an other place, after he had spoken of the shortness, and the transitory and vanishing image of mans life, he addeth:² but the mercy of the Lord is for ever upon them that fear him. Like whereunto is that which is in the hundred and second Psalm. At the beginning Lord thou didst lay the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou abidest: they shall wax old like a garment, and thou shalt change them as apparel, but thou remain the self same, and thy years shall not fail: the sons of thy servants shall dwell, and thy posterity shall be stablished before thee. If the Godly cease not for the decay of heaven & earth to be stablished before the Lord, it followeth, that their salvation is joined with the eternity of God. But that hope can not stand at all, unless it rest upon the promise that is set forth in Isaiah:³ The heavens (saith the Lord) shall vanish away like smoke, the earth shall be worn out like a garment, & the inhabitants of it shall perish like those things.