A17698:1305
Sermons upon Deuteronomy
The sermons of M. John Calvin upon the fifth book of Moses called Deuteronomy faithfully gathered word for word as he preached them in open pulpit; together with a preface of the ministers of the Church of Geneva, and an admonishment made by the deacons there. Also there are annexed two profitable tables, the one containing the chief matters; the other the places of Scripture herein alleged. Translated out of French by Arthur Golding.The sermons of M. Iohn Caluin vpon the fifth booke of Moses called Deuteronomie faithfully gathered word for word as he preached them in open pulpet; together with a preface of the ministers of the Church of Geneua, and an admonishment made by the deacons there. Also there are annexed two profitable tables, the one containing the chiefe matters; the other the places of Scripture herein alledged. Translated out of French by Arthur Golding.
London: printed by Henry Middleton for George Bishop, 1583
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Now then if the Altars were suffered to stand still: were it not a retaining still of some memorial of the lewdness which ought to §50mislike us? Yes: for otherwise what were our zeal? When we call to remembrance that we have heard Mass in times past, and had cast our selves into that dungeon: we ought to be sorry and to crave pardon for it, and to be abashed at the blindness whereinto we were fallen, wherethrough we became so beastly, as to go seek our salvation by renouncing the redemption that was purchased for us long ago by our Lord Jesus Christ, and to make §60our selves partakers of so devilish a thing: I say were ought to be afraid in our selves to think of it. And if the Altars should have stood still, had it not been as it were a spiting of God to play mockeholyday with him after that fashion, that whereas we had shrunk away from Christianity, we be never a whit sorry for it, no nor grieved at all to see the badges thereof? And in very deed the Jews were cast in the teeth with their retaining still of those things, as who should say they weltered still in their own filthiness. And if a lewd woman that had given her body to dishonesty for a time▪ should afterward rejoice to see still the marks of her whoredom: were it not a sign that she repented not at all? Yes: and even that is the cause why this exception is purposely added, that when the kings went about to serve God,1 and had beaten down the idols, yet they held still some relics of them, and this blemish sticketh expressly upon them, that God misliked them: as if he should say, they were not worthy to be allowed without exception, but be driven to bear this mark of reproach always in their faces, that they had not throughly cleansed the land from the former superstitions, when they left the groves standing still. If a man say, why, and was that so evil a thing? Are not trees the creatures of God? Yes: but when men shall have misused them and put them to such heathenish uncleanness as to spite God with them: then must they be wiped quite and clean away. Men must not take overmuch liberty in that case: for our nature is too much given to evil of it self, (as I said afore) without any enticing of it thereunto. Thus ye see how we ought generally to endeavour to abolish all superstitions, and all things that may serve thereto.