A17698:4055
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 what came to pass after that God had provided so well for the matter? The law perished and was lost. And surely §50seeing there was so good order taken for the preservation thereof, that men might hear it spoken of, yea and that at the end of every seven year in the feast of Tabernacles, in that solemn day, the covenant of God was to be renewed, & the whole law was to be repeated before all the people: it is an incredible matter that the same was so straitly kept, yet notwithstanding that in the mean while there was such recklessness, that the people made no reckoning to be deprived of their chief welfare.§60 For men (as we have already said) be more wretched than brute beasts, unless they be taught by God. To what end serveth all the reason & understanding that they suppose themselves to have by nature, but to their greevouser condemnation, until God hath put forth his hand to them, and have showed them whereunto they must stick? But yet howsoever the world went, the children of Israel, that blessed seed of Abraham, the chosen people, elect & adopted of God, his inheritance and his Church, they (I say) unto whom God had done so great honour, whom he had exalted unto so high a dignity, having heard the law published, ought every of them to have borne it in mind, and to have kept it as carefully as men keep the charters of a kingdom, or the Crown, or other such things. And truly in all comparison, the law of God deserveth well to have the preeminence above all that ever is in the world. But yet for all that it vanisheth away, & in the mean space the people had no great care thereof. And surely it is a very strange case how it should come to pass, considering that the remembrance thereof was so solemnly kept, by reason whereof all the people ought to have thought thus: How now? We lose this good custom, whereby the law of god should now sound in our ears, whereby we should have the remembrance thereof renewed; whereby we should be confirmed in his covenant, & whereby the same should be ratified unto us by the reading of the law. The people (I say) had no regard to any of these things. In deed they assembled at the feast day, & made great cheer, but yet every body returned home to his own house, without having regard to these things, insomuch that the law lay as it were buried until the time of Josiah,1 in the which it was found again.