A17698:1433
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.
& ought not it to have sufficed me if I had not bin quite paste grace? But yet for all this, I hold on still mine accustomed trade: nevertheless he ceaseth not to waken me up with afflictions. He is loth that I should welter in mine own dung, and yet do I continue still in my stubbornness: and what will come of it in the end? After this manner §30(say I) must we quicken up our selves, & call to remembrance the whole time of our life, or else we shall never bethink us of the adversities that we have endured, but with murmuring & grudging against God. In like case is it with prosperity. If God make us to prosper, & afterward cast some affliction upon us: we be the more grieved at it, insomuch that in stead of saying with Job, we have received good at the Lords hand,1 & why should we not receive evil §40also? (for when he doth us good, he is not unwilling to continue it, & his ceasing of it, is not for that he is become niggardly, or unable to do us good any more: but because he knoweth it to be expedient for us to be so exercised, that he may try our patience: & so ought we to think:) But what? we on the contrary part say thus: it comes to my mind that I was well at mine ease, and I had this & that. To be short, we could find in our hearts to serve Satan, so we might have §50prosperity, & we seek to make our selves merry, bearing our selves on hand in the mean while, that it is but lost labour to serve God. Thus we see how men turn to the clean contrary, both the prosperity & the adversity that God sendeth them. But when we should learn any thing, our remembrance is very short: for if God have afflicted us for a time, we never think of it after. In deed as long as the cross endureth, we can skill to sigh & to play the hypocrites, & to pretend §60that if God would vouchsafe to abate his rigour, we will become little Angels: but as soon as he withdraweth his hand from us, our nature falls by and by to his old bias, we do but shake our ears a little, & we never think more upon his corrections to do our selves any good by them. If God send us any prosperity, we have forgotten them out of hand. Insomuch that when we have once crammed our selves full, in stead of yielding him thanks, we fall to kicking against him like overpampered jades, as shall be declared in the two & thirtieth chapter: