Sermons of M. John Calvin upon the Epistle of Saint Paul to the GalatiansSermons of M. Iohn Caluine vpon the Epistle of Saincte Paule to the Galathians

have we not cause (if we think well upon it) to overleap all the lets that Satan can cast in our ways to make us turn head or to retire back, that we might not continue in the certainty of our faith? Surely the victory will be easy enough for us against all, remptations, if we can consider of what value the death and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ is, and what it importeth. So then S. Paul armeth us here, too the end we might hold out with invincible constancy, against all the stops that Satan laboureth too ⟨p. 106⟩lay afore us, to hinder us from keeping on our course. When the faithful are pinched with hunger or thirst, they be troubled with looking here and there for the promise that they shall be heirs of the world, and in the mean while do well near starve for famine and penury. But if they look to our Lord Jesus Christ, that will dispatch them of all their trouble, and sweeten all the bitterness that might have put the promises of salvation out of taste with them. Therefore whensoever the faithful are in any peril, or be persecuted, so as they have many wrongs and injuries done them, and yet are not succoured of all that while:¹ they might think thus with themselves:² Where is God? He hath promised to dwell in us, to keep us as the Apple of his eye, and to be our shield and fortress: and yet in the mean while we be cast up too the spoil, wherefore it is certain that we shall be undone at every blow. But when we come to the death and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, we must conclude that the Son of God was not offered up in vain. Seeing then that our Lord Jesus Christ spared not himself, but abased himself so far as too suffer so slanderous, yea and cursed a death, and afterward also the pains of Hell, howbeit but for a while, too the end too set us free and clear, and too purchase us grace before the judgement seat of God his father: should that doing of his be unavailable? Is it possible that it should be? No: For if Heaven and earth were turned upside down, it were not so great a confusion, as too imagine that the Son of God hath suffered in vain. Then see we now why Saint Paul telleth us that he lived by faith. For it behoveth us to be settled upon the death and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, assuring our selves that it is able enough too draw us out of the dungeons of death.