The Institution of Christian Religion

But that is spoken not in respect of the purpose or meaning of God that punisheth, but of the vehement feeling of sorrow, which they feel that suffer any of his severity what so ever it be. But he not only pricketh his faithful with no small rigour, but sometimes so woundeth them, that they think themselves not far from the damnation of hell. So he testifieth that they have deserved his wrath, and so it behoveth that they should loth themselves in their evils, and be touched with the greater care to appease God, and carefully make haste to crave pardon. But even in the very same doing he showeth a more evident testimony of his favourable kindness than of his wrath. For the covenant continueth that was made with us in our true Solomon: the truth whereof he, that can not deceive, hath affirmed,¹ that it shall never be made void. If (saith he) his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgements: if they defile my statutes, and keep not my commandments, I will visit their sins with a rod and with stripes: but I will not take away my mercy from him. Of which mercy to make us assured, he saith, that the rod wherewith he will correct the posterity of Solomon,² shall be of men, and stripes of the children of men: by which clauses when he meaneth moderation and lenity; he there withal secretly declareth, that they can not but be confounded with extreme and deadly horror, that feel the hand of God to be against them. Now great regard he hath of this lenity in chastising his Israel, he showeth in the Prophet:³ I have purged thee (saith he) in fire: But not as Silver, for then thou shouldest have ben all consumed. Albeit he teacheth that chastisements serve him for to cleanse him, but he further saith that he useth the same so temperately, that he be not to much consumed by them. And that is needful. For the more that every man reverently feareth God, and giveth himself to follow godliness, so much the tenderer he is to bear his wrath. For the reprobate, although they groan under his scourges, yet for that they weigh not the cause, but rather turn their back both to their own ⟨image 228⟩sins and to the judgement of God, by that slothfulness they gather a hardness: or because they murmur and kick against him, and do make an uproar against their judge, that furious sudden rage astoni eth them with madness and furor.