The sermons of M. John Calvin, upon the Epistle of S. Paul too the…The sermons of M. Iohn Caluin, vpon the Epistle of S. Paule too the…

Paul) stark wickedness. For if God should let us go after our own thoughts: it is certain, that there is not a more horrible confusion, than that would be. ⟨p. 71⟩So then, we see that men are not humbled here by halves, too confess only their frailty, and that they have partly need too be succoured and helped at God• hand: but we see they be utterly damned before him, sit• their thoughts are here called wicked and froward, and that they have nothing in them which provoketh not Gods vengeance against them. So then, let us on the one side yield our selves guilty, assuring our selves that we were justly bereft of all Gods graces in the person of Adam: And again, on the other side let us not take the same for an excuse, in hope too scape by such shift, as who should say, we were not the bondslaves of sin, nor we our selves any whit too blame for it, because we be held down in Satan's snares and nets even from our birth. But it behoveth us to consider always, that every of us shall find the wellspring of his disease in his own conscience. Men may hold plea as much as they list: but if they enter into themselves, and ask their own consciences, ye shall see them condemned and confounded without any nay. When a man hath babbled what he can, so as he thinks he hath won the goal, by saying that he hath no free will of his own, nor ability too resist God: there needeth no more but this one word: what thinkest thou too be the thing that provoketh thee too evil? Ho, it is the devil. Thou sayest well. But yet mark a little whether that doth so fully excuse thee, as that thou perceivest not right well, that thou wart stirred up and driven too it by thine own selfmoving: knowest thou not that the wellspring and root of the mischief is in thy self? When thou art so rebellious against God, that thy thoughts are full of untruth and unbelief, and that so much the more because thy lusts are out of square, and embattled against God and his righteousness, even too make war with him: when thou seest all this, must thou yet hold plea further with him? So then, let us not seek any starting holes, seeing we carry a sufficient judge with us, even within us, namely seeing that every of our own consciences rebuketh us. That is the thing that S. Paul aimed at in this strain.

Paule) starke wickednesse. For if God should let vs go after our owne thoughtes: it is certeine, that there is not a more horrible confuzion, than that would bee.