A17698:693
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 now it is immediately said, When these adversities are come upon you, ye shall return to your GOD and obey his voice. And because the Lord is merciful, he will not forget you nor caste you out of his presence, nor out of the covenant ⟨p. 156⟩of your fathers. This serveth to express yet better the doctrine which I touched where Moses said, When these miseries are come upon you, then shall you seek your God. For he showeth that men play the drunken folk so long as God dealeth gently with them: and that they cannot perceive their sins, except they be made to smart. When these miseries have caught hold of you, then (saith he) &c. By the miseries that he speaketh of, he meaneth the punishments wherewith he had threatened §10the people before. To be short, God must be fain to show us his wrath to our faces, and to make us to feel it: or else we conceive it not. And we see it is so. For when we be daily told of Gods wrath, we make but a sport of it, it moves us not a whit. And why? Because we be earthly and fleshly, and therefore God is fain to make us feel his wrath and vengeance according to our rudeness. Yet notwithstanding we be still nice and tender, insomuch that if we feel any §20thing amiss in our bodies, and that we have not our own desires: we be by and by vexed & grieved, and by that means God amendeth us. Not that we be humbled at the first stripe: but we come to it by little and little and as it were by degrees, so as in the end God maketh his corrections available. And whereas I say that God bringeth us home to him by the chastisements that he sendeth us: that is not general to all men. We see that the unbelievers become the frowarder,§30 insomuch that when God chastiseth them for their sins, they storm against him, they gnash their teeth, and in the end they fall to despair. But this saying concerneth those that are rightly of Gods Church: those when they be chastised are willing to return to God in their adversities. Thus ye see what Moses meant to express in saying, When these miseries shall have caught hold of thee. As if he had said, so long as your God suffereth you to live in rest, so long as he setteth §40not your sins before you, so long as he calleth you not to a reckoning: you think your selves out of danger, and that no man can hurt you, and (which worse is) your faults never come to your remembrances.