A17698:4246
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 he addeth, that the people forgot the God which had begotten them, and the mighty one which had created and shaped them. He useth still the same word which I have translated before, and which signifieth properly a Rock. And God is so termed, because we be preserved, and §40maintained by his power, as if a house were grounded and builded upon a rock. Whereas he sayeth that the people had forgotten the God which had begotten them, it is to bereave them of all excuse of ignorance. For the Heathen might well have said that they had never tasted a whit of the true religion, and that their weltering after that manner in their own dotages, was for want of teaching, and that it is no wonder though a blind man stumble or go astray in the dark. The Heathen might §50have alleged after that sort for themselves. But as for those to whom the law had bin given, there was no such starting hole for them. For God had drawn their father Abraham from the idolatry wherein he lived,1 as is declared in the last Chapter of Joshua. Hereupon, about a four hundred years after, he put them the better in mind again that he was the living God. And afterward he did set down his will even in writing. It was his mind that it should §60be a president of authority whereby to knit a mutual agreement between him and them, as if he should say, I will be your father, and be you my children. Seeing then that the people of Israel were taught after that fashion, and God uttered himself so familiarly unto them; what can they say, or what excuse can they allege, for their turning away to the superstitions of the Heathen, and for their perverting of the trueth, which was so throughly known unto them, and yet they turned it into lies, insomuch as they fell to the quenching of the light of salvation, and would needs go wilfully and wittingly astray, seeking their own destruction even after that God had reached them his hand, and showed them the way of salvation? According whereunto we have seen the protestation that Moses made in the thirtieth Chapter, saying: This is he way,2 walk therein. Is it not too shameful a rebelliousness, when folk will so despise God and not stick unto him? So then, it is not causeless that they be accused in this text to have forgotten the GOD which shaped them.