A17698:3193
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.
But the principal point is for us to understand what is lawful for us, and from thence every one may gather what his office and duty is towards his wife. And the wives also are to be exhorted to discharge themselves the more faithfully towards their husbands, when they shall know upon what condition they are joined together. Now as touching the husbands,1 our Lord Jesus Christ sayeth, that if any man forsake his wife, except it be for fornication, he is an adulterer, and he maketh his wife an adulteress also: he excepteth fornication. Now when he sayeth that the man is an adulterer, it is because he hath broken wedlock. For if he separate himself from his wife although he play not the adulterer otherwise, yet seeing he hath falsified the faith which he once plighted, he is convicted of adultery. The reason is, because it is the law of marriage that when a man joineth himself unto a wife, he taketh her for his companion to live & to die withal. If the nature of wedlock be such that the man and the wife be contracted together to the end to live & to die together, & that the man should be the head, & the woman the body: the man hath now but the half part of his own person, and can no more separate himself from his wife, than cut himself into two pieces. And that were (as I told you) against nature. Now he maketh his wife also an adulteress: for although the wife have liberty to take unto her a new party according unto civil order, yet as touching God, she ought to take no other, but to remain a widow. For if she go and marry her self again, she is an adulteress:2 and that is the cause why S. Paul also saith expres•e: that if a woman be separated from her husband, not for adultery (for he meaneth not so:) but because the husband cannot brook his wife, she shall remain a widow, or reconcile her self (saith he) unto her husband. Ye see what the remedy is which Saint Paul giveth. And it is no new remedy which appertaineth to Christians as touching ⟨p. 837⟩conscience: it hath ever been. For S. Paul addeth nothing unto the law of God, nor to that rule which is common unto all the children of God. But although the Jews had that custom because of the hardness of their hearts; yet nevertheless if a woman be put away from her husband, she ought rather to remain a widow, or to reconcile herself unto her husband, than to marry again.