A17698:4185
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.
And here we have to note in the first place, that inasmuch as the office of distributing the world into portions is attributed unto God: we sojourn as it were by his appointment, so long as we dwell here below. True it is that the children of Israel had a peculiar state: but here Moses speaketh of the whole world, accordingly also as the same is treated of in the hundred psalm and in other places.1 And that ought make us to live in the fear of God, wheresoever we be. For why? We be found at his cost, & our dwelling upon earth is not by haphazard, but where it pleaseth him to maintain us. Ye see then how it is a profitable lesson to teach men to live as in the presence of God, because it is he that hath appointed them to dwell there. But by the way we be warned also, ⟨p. 1117⟩not to trouble the bounds of places or the common order, but to hold our selves every man to his own, without encroaching upon other men. For why? God hath ordained bounds in the world from the beginning. This being so; let every man now abide in his own possession; and let not men trouble nor molest one another. Yet notwithstanding we see how malicious men are. For ambition and covetousness have caused all the bounds to be broken which GOD §10had set in the world. Nimrod began first with setting up the kingdom of Babylon:2 and afterward other men became desirous to win one from another. Ye see then how men have perverted the order that God had set in the world like unsatiable gulfs. But howsoever men have dealt, yet hath God always so bridled them, that for all their greediness they could never set such confusion, but that some certain order hath remained still. Howsoever the case stand, let us §20mark well, that Gods creating of men was not to cast them here at all adventure: but that his ordaining and settling of the earth was to the end we should dwell therein. And truly we know that the earth was covered with water, & naturally the sea ought to be above the earth, so as all of it should be overflowed. It is of special virtue that we have any dry place whereon to set our foot. And who is the doer of that? As soon as God commanded the waters to