Although I do not hero-worship Calvin, or any other author, I admire him and thank God for raising him up at the time of the Reformation. Calvin wrote many books, he was an diligent worker, a wise teacher and a man of great humility, and love for the truth. I have been reading his most famous and influential work, 'The Institutes' and share with you quotes which struck me as I was reading. Calvin has a lot to say, the Institutes are about 1500 pages, and consist of 4 books. I have tried to select the most interesting parts.
NEW: I HAVE ADDED A NEW SERIES OF CALVIN QUOTES, THIS TIME FROM HIS SERMONS ON GALATIANS, PUBLISHED BY OLD PATHS PUBLICATIONS, THIS BOOK CAN BE PURCHASED FROM THE CPRF BOOKSTORE: SEE LINK ON HOME PAGE TO CPRF (COVENANT PROTESTANT REFORMED FELLOWSHIP IN NORTHERN IRELAND)
THE INSTITUTES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, by John Calvin (1509-1564)
Since I undertook the office of teacher in the church, I have had no other purpose than to benefit the church by maintaining the pure doctrine of godliness. Yet I think that there is no one who is assailed, bitten and wounded by more false accusations than I. (John Calvin to the reader 1559)
Prefatory Dedication to King Francis I of France
For they (Calvin's enemies) cannot bear that the whole praise and glory of all goodness, virtue, righteousness, and wisdom should rest with God.
If the contest were to be determined on patristic [the ''Church Fathers''] authority, the tide of victory - to put it very modestly -- would turn to our side. Now, these fathers have written many wise and excellent things. Still what commonly happens has befallen them too, in some instances. For these so called pious children of theirs, with all their sharpness of wit and judgment and spirit, worship only the faults and errors of the fathers. The good things which the fathers have written they either do not notice, or misrepresent or pervert. You might say that their only care is to gather dung amidst gold.
THE MAIN PART:
(all quotations are in X:Y:Z format = Book: Chapter:Paragraph)
BOOK 1: All who set up their own false rites to God worship and adore their own ravings. Unless they had first fashioned a God to match the absurdity of their trifling, they would by no means have dared trifle with God in this way. (1:4:3)
Since the human mind because of its feebleness can in no way attain to God unless it be aided and assisted by his sacred Word, all mortals at that time (OT times) -- except for the Jews -- because they were seeking God without the Word, had of necessity to stagger about in vanity and error (1:6:4)
Daily oracles are not sent from heaven for it pleased the Lord to hallow his truth to everlasting remembrance in the Scriptures alone (1:7:1)
Whenever, them, the fewness of believers disturbs us, let the converse come to mind, that only those to whom it is given can comprehend the mysteries of God (1:7:5)
As far as sacred Scripture is concerned , however much froward men try to gnaw at it, nevertheless it clearly is crammed with thoughts that could not be humanly conceived. Let each of the prophets be looked into: none will be found who does not far exceed human measure. Consequently, those for whom prophetic doctrine is tasteless ought to be thought of as lacking taste buds (1:8:2)
Those who wish to prove to unbelievers that Scripture is the Word of God are acting foolishly, for only by faith can this be known (1:8:13)
He is the Author of the Scriptures: he cannot vary or differ from himself. Hence he must ever remain just as he once revealed himself there. This is no affront to him, unless perchance we consider it honourable for him to decline or degenerate from himself (1:9:2)
God did not bring forth his Word among men for the sake of a momentary display, intending at the coming of the Spirit to abolish it. Rather he sent down the same Spirit by whose power he had dispensed his Word to complete his work by the efficacious confirmation of the Word (1:9:3)
It is perfectly clear that those who try to defend images of God and the saints with an example of those cherubim (the ones on the Ark of the Covenant) are raving madmen (1:11:3)
Jeremiah declares that 'the wood is a doctrine of vanity; Habakkuk teaches that 'a molten image is a teacher of falsehood', from such statements we must surely infer this general doctrine, that whatever men learn of God from images is futile, indeed false. (1:11:5)
Paul testifies that by the true preaching of the Gospel 'Christ is depicted before our eyes as crucified (Galatians 3:1)', what purpose did it serve for so many crosses -- of wood, stone, silver and gold -- to be erected here and there in churches, if this fact had been duly and faithfully taught: that Christ died on the cross to bear our curse, to expiate our sins by the sacrifice of his body, to wash them by his blood, in short to reconcile us to God the Father? From this one fact they could have learned more than from a thousand crosses of wood or stone (1: 11: 7)
The Anthropomorphites, also, who imagined a corporeal God from the fact that Scripture often ascribes to him a mouth, ears, eyes, hands and feet are easily refuted. For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont to 'lisp' when speaking to us? Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity (1:13:1)
Arius confessed that Christ was God and the Son of God, and if he had done what was right, pretended some agreement with the other men. Yet in the meantime he did not cease to prate that Christ was created and had a beginning, as other creatures. The ancients, to drag the man's versatile craftiness out of its hiding place, went farther, declaring Christ the eternal Son of the Father, consubstantial with the Father. (1:13:4)
Arius says that Christ is God, but mutters that he was made and had a beginning. He says that Christ is one with the Father, but secretly whispers in the ears of his own partisans that He is united to the Father like other believers, although by a singular privelege. Say 'consubstantial' and you will tear off the mask of this turncoat, and yet you add nothing to Scripture. Sabellius says that the Father, Son and Spirit signify no distinctions in God. Say that they are three and he will scream at you that you are naming three gods. Say that in the one essence of God there is a trinity of persons, you will say in one word what Scripture states, and cut short empty talkativeness. (1:13:5)
When a certain shameless fellow mockingly asked a pious old man what God had done before the creation of the world the latter aptly countered that he had been building hell for the curious (1:14:1)
Wrong is done to God when a higher cause of things than his will is demanded (1:14:1)
The depravity and malice both of man and of the devil and the sins that arise therefrom do not spring from nature, but rather from the corruption of nature (1:14:3)
We ought to hold to one rule of modesty and sobriety: not to speak, or guess, or even to seek to know, concerning obscure matters anything except what has been imparted to us by God's Word (1:14:4)
Some persons grumble that Scripture does not in numerous passages set forth systematically and clearly that fall of the devils, its cause, manner, time and character. But because this has nothing to do with us, it was better not to say anything, or at least to touch upon it lightly, because it did not befit the Holy Spirit to feed our curiosity with empty histories to no effect. And we see that the Lord's purpose was to teach nothing in his sacred oracles except what we should learn to our edification. Therefore, lest we ourselves linger over superfluous matters, let us be content with this brief summary of the nature of devils: they were when first created angels of God, but by degeneration they ruined themselves, and became the instruments of ruin for others (1:14:16)
Nothing is more inconstant than man. Contrary motions stir up and variously distract his soul. Repeatedly he is led astray by ignorance. He yields, overcome by the slightest temptation. We know his mind to be a sink and lurking place for every sort of filth (1:15:5)
There is no erratic power or action or motion in creatures but they are governed by God's secret plan in such a way that nothing happens except what is knowingly and willingly decreed by Him (1:16:3)
We make God the ruler and governor of all things, who in accordance with his wisdom has from the farthest limit of eternity decreed what he was going to do, and now by his might carries out what he has decreed (1:16:8)
We must so cherish moderation that we do not try to make God render account to us, but so reverence his secret judgments and consider his will the truly just cause of all things (1:17:1)
God's providence does not always meet us in its naked form, but God in a sense clothes it with the means employed (1:17:4)
So great and boundless is God's wisdom that he knows right well how to use evil instruments to do good (1:17:5)
Whence I ask you comes the stench of a corpse when it is both putrefied and laid open by the heat of the sun? All men see that it is stirred up by the sun's rays, yet no one for this reason says that the rays stink. Thus since the matter and guilt of evil repose in a wicked man what reason is there to think that God contracts any defilement if he uses his service for his own purpose? Away, therefore, with this doglike impudence, which can indeed bark at God's justice afar off but cannot touch it (1:17:5)
We shall not attribute repentance to God without saying either that he is ignorant of what is going to happen , or cannot escape it, or hastily and rashly rushes into a decision of which he immediately has to repent. (1:17:12)
What therefore does the word 'repentance' mean? Surely its meaning is like that of all other modes of speaking that describe God for us in human terms. For because our weakness does not attain to his exalted state, the description of him that is given to us must be accommodated to our capacity so that we may understand it. Now the mode of accommodation is for him to represent himself to us not as he is himself, but as he seems to us (1:17:13)
They babble and talk absurdly who, in the place of God's providence, substitute bare permission -- as if God sat in a watchtower awaiting chance events , and his judgments thus depended upon human will (1:18:1)
If they seek from pretending ignorance to be praised for moderation, what haughtier thing can be imagined than to oppose God's authority with one little word, such as, 'To me it seems otherwise' or 'I do not want to touch upon this'? But if they openly curse, what will they gain by spitting at the sky? (1:18:3)
God's will is wrongly confused with his precept: innumerable examples clearly show how utterly different these two are (1:18:4)
We ought indeed to hold fast by this: while God accomplishes through the wicked what he has decreed by his secret judgment, they are not excusable, as if they had obeyed his precept which out of their own lust they deliberately break (1:18:4)
Surely in Judas' betrayal it will be no more right, because God both willed that his Son be delivered up, and delivered him up to death, to ascribe the guilt of the crime to God than to transfer the credit for redemption to Judas (1:18:4)
Let those for whom this seems harsh consider for a little while how bearable their squeamishness is in refusing a thing attested by clear Scriptural proofs because it exceeds their mental capacity, and find fault that things are put forth pubicly, which if God had not judged useful for men to know, he would never have bidden his prophets and apostles to teach. For our wisdom ought to be nothing else than to embrace with humble teachableness, and at least without finding fault, whatever is taught in Sacred Scripture. Those who too insolently scoff, even though it is clear that they are prating against God, are not worthy of a longer refutation (1:18:4)
BOOK 2:
There is indeed nothing that man's nature seeks more eagerly than to be flattered. Accordingly, when his nature becomes aware that its gifts are highly esteemed, it tends to be unduly credulous about them. It is no wonder that the majority of men have erred so perniciously in this respect. For, since blind self-love is innate in all mortals, they are most freely persuaded that nothing inheres in them that deserves to be considered hateful (2:1:2)
Whoever, then, heeds such teachers as hold us back with thought only of our good traits will not advance in self-knowledge, but will be plunged into the worst ignorance (2:1:2)
'As through one man sin came into the world and through sin death, which spread among all men when all sinned' (Rom 5:12), thus through Christ's grace righteousness and life are restored to us (Rom 5:17). What nonsense will the Pelagians chatter here? That Adam's sin was propagated by imitation? Then does Christ's righteousness benefit us only as an example set before us to imitate? Who can bear such sacrilege! (2:1:6)
Whether man is a guilty unbeliever, or an innocent believer, he begets not innocent but guilty children, for he begets them from a corrupted nature (2:1:7)
Even infants themselves, while they carry their condemnation with them from their mother's womb, are guilty not of another's fault but of their own. For, even though the fruits of their iniquity have not yet come forth, they have the seed enclosed within them. Indeed, their whole nature is a seed of sin; hence it can only be hateful and abhorrent to God. From this it follows that it is rightly considered sin in God's sight, for without guilt there would be no accusation (2:1:8)
Our nature is not only destitute and empty of good, but so fertile and fruitful of every evil that it cannot be idle (2:1:8)
Let no one grumble here that God could have provided better for our salvation if he had forestalled Adam's fall. Pious minds ought to loathe this objection, because it manifests inordinate curiousity (2:1:10)
Freewill is not sufficient to enable man to do good works, unless he be helped by grace, indeed by special grace, while only the elect receive through regeneration. For I do not tarry over those fanatics who babble that grace is equally and indiscriminately distributed. (2:2:6)
Man's keenness of mind is mere blindness as far as the 'knowledge' of God is concerned (2:2:19)
Nothing is accomplished by preaching Him (Christ) if the Spirit, as our inner teacher, does not show our minds the way. Only those men, therefore, who have heard and have been taught by the Father come to Him. What kind of learning and hearing is this? Surely, when the Spirit by a wonderful and singular power forms our ears to hear and our minds to understand. (2:2:20)
[Rom 8:6-8] Is the flesh so perverse that it is wholly disposed to bear a grudge against God, cannot agree with the justice of divine law, can, in short, beget nothing but the occasion of death? Now suppose that in man's nature there is nothing but flesh: extract something good from it if you can. (2:3:1)
God begins his good work in us, therefore, by arousing love and desire and zeal for righteousness in our hearts, or, to speak more correctly, by bending, forming and directing our hearts to righteousness. He completes his work, moreover, by confirming us to perseverance (2:3:6)
But if by this comparison [heart of stone becoming heart of flesh, Exekiel 36] the Lord wished to show that nothing good can ever be wrung from our heart, unless it has become wholly other, let us not divide between us and him what he claims for himself alone. (2:3:6)
God does not move the will in such a manner as has been taught and believed for many ages -- that it is afterwards in our choice either to obey or resist the motion -- but by disposing it effecaciously. (2:3:10)
If people mean that man has in himself the power to work in partnership with God's grace they are most wretchedly deluding themselves (2:3:11)
Man, while he sins of necessity, yet sins no less voluntarily (2:4:1)
We see no inconsistency in assigning the same deed to God, Satan and man; but the distinction in purpose and manner causes God's righteousness to shine forth blameless there, while the wickedness of Satan and man betrays itself by its own disgrace (2:4:2)
Though all of us by nature are suffering the same disease only those whom it pleases the Lord to touch with his healing hand will get well. The others, whom he, in his righteous judgment, passes over waste away in their own rottenness until they are consumed (2:4:3)
But you ask, what will miserable little man do when softness of heart which is necessary for obedience is denied him? Indeed, what excuse will he have, seeing that he can credit hardness of heart to no-one but himself? (2:5:5)
The wicked are not rocks or stumps when they are taught through the Law that their lusts are opposed to God and they become guilty on their own admission: nor are believers stocks and stones when they are warned of their own weakness and take refuge in grace. On this point that profound statement of Augustine is pertinent: 'God bids us do what we cannot, that we may know what we ought to seek from Him' (2:5:7)
Now away with those who infer from the precepts that man is perhaps capable of obedience, in order to destroy God's grace through which the commandments themselves are fulfilled (2:5:8)
The prophet says, 'I have inclined my heart to perform thy statutes [Psalm 119:112] namely, because he had pledged himself willingly and with cheerful attitude of mind to God. And yet he does not boast of himself as the author of his inclination, which he confesses in the same psalm to be the gift of God [Psalm 119:36] (2:5:11)
In vain people busy themselves with finding any good of man's own in his will. For any mixture of the power of freewill that men strive to mingle with God's grace is nothing but a corruption of grace. It is just as if one were to dilute wine with muddy, bitter water. (2:5:15)
Therfore let us hold this as an undoubted truth which no siege engines can shake: the mind of man has been so completely estranged from God's righteousness that it conceives, desires and undertakes only that which is impious, perverted, foul, impure and infamous. The heart is so steeped in the poison of sin that it can breathe out nothing but a loathsome stench. But if some men occasionally make a show of good, their minds nevertheless ever remain envelopped in hypocrisy and deceitful craft, and their hearts bound by inner perversity (2:5:19)
All the more vile is the stupidity of those persons who open heaven to all the impious and unbelieving without the grace of Him whom Scripture commonly teaches to be the only door whereby we enter into salvation (2:6:1)
Although faith rests in God, it will gradually disappear unless he who retains it in perfect firmness intercedes as Mediator. Otherwise, God's majesty is too lofty to be attained by mortal men, who are like grubs crawling upon the earth (2:6:4)
So long as man is permitted to stand upon his own judgment he passes off hypocrisy as righteousness: pleased with this, he is aroused against God's grace by I know not what countefeit acts of righteousness. But after he is compelled to weigh his life in the scales of the law, laying aside all that presumption of fictitious righteousness, he discovers that he is a long way from holiness, and is in fact teeming with a multitude of vices, which with he previously thought himself undefiled (2:7:6)
Dismissing the stupid opinion of their own strength they [the elect] come to realise that they stand and are upheld by God's hand alone; that naked, and empty-handed, they flee to his mercy, repose entirely in it, hide deep within it, and seize upon it alone for righteousness and merit (2:7:8)
If the whole nature of men, whom the Lord does not deem worthy to share in his grace, is condemnable, we know that destruction is prepared for them. Nevertheless, they perish by their own iniquity, not by any unjust hatred on God's part. There is no basis for complaining about why they are not helped like others to salvation by God's grace (2:8:20)
It is clear that any other union apart from marriage is accursed in God's sight; and that companionship of marriage has been ordained as a necessary remedy to keep us from plunging into unbridled lust. Let us not delude ourselves, then, when we hear that outside marriage man cannot cohabit with a woman without God's curse (2:8:41)
Let no man rashly despise marriage as something unprofitable or superfluous to him; let also no man long for celibacy unless he can live without a wife (2:8:43)
While God forbids us to commit fornication, at the same time he does not permit us to seduce the modesty of another by wanton dress, and obscene gestures and foul speech (2:8:44)
To be Christians under the law of grace does not mean to wander unbridled outside the law, but to be engrafted in Christ, by whose grace we are free from the curse of the law, and by whose Spirit we have the law engraved upon our hearts (2:8:57)
The ancient fathers have known well that, however the saints were buffetted about, their final end was to be life and salvation, while the way of the wicked is a pleasant felicity by which they gradually slip into the whirlpool of death (2:10:18)
Whatever Christ did or suffered in acquiring eternal salvation pertains to the believers of the Old Testament as much as to ourselves (2:10:23)
Here is something marvellous: the Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he willed to be borne in the virgin's womb, to go about the earth, and to hang upon the cross, yet he continously filled the world even as he had done from the beginning! (2:13:4)
Outside Christ there is nothing worth knowing, and all who by faith perceive what he is like have grasped the whole immensity of heavenly benefits (2:15:2)
We have in his death the complete fullfillment of salvation, for through it we are reconciled to God, his righteous judgment is satisfied, the curse is removed, and the penalty paid in full (2:16:13)
Christ turns the Father's eyes to His own righteousness to avert His gaze from our sins (2:16:16)
Since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him (Christ)
let us drink our fill from this fountain and from none other (2:16:19)
BOOK 3:
Indeed it is true that faith looks to God, but this must be added: 'To know Christ Jesus whom he has sent' (Jn 17:3)for God would have remained hidden afar off, if Christ's splendour had not beamed upon us (3:2:1)
Is this what believing means --- to understand nothing, provided only that you submit your feeling obediently to the church? Faith rests not on ignorance but on knowledge (3:2:2)
The sole pledge of His (God's) love is Christ, without whom the signs of hatred and wrath are everywhere evident (3:2:7)
The human heart has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood works, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself (3:2:10)
God, while not ceasing to love His children, is sometimes wondrously angry toward them; not because He is disposed of himself to hate them, but because He would frighten them by the feeling of His wrath in order to humble their fleshly pride, shake off their sluggishness, and arouse them to repentance (3:2:12)
The root of faith can never be torn from the godly breast, but clings so fast to the inmost parts that, however faith seems to be shaken or to bend this way or that, its light is never so extinguished or snuffed out that it does not at least lurk as it were beneath the ashes (3:2:21)
It is indisputable that no one is loved by God apart from [outside of] Christ (3:2:32)
And this bare and exernal proof of the word of God should have been amply sufficient to engender faith, did not our blindness and perversity prevent it. But our mind has such an inclination to vanity that it can never cleave fast to the truth of God; and it has such a dullness that it is always blind to the light of God's truth. Accordingly, without the illumination of the Holy Spirit the word can do nothing (3:2:33)
Indeed the Word of God is like the sun, shining upon all those to whom it is proclaimed, but with ho effect among the blind. Now, all of us are blind by nature in this respect. Accordingly, it cannot penetrate into our minds unless the Spirit, as the inner teacher, through His illumination makes entry for it (3:2:34)
Our Saviour, to teach us that belief comes as a gift and not from merit, says: 'No one comes to me, unless the Father . . draw Him' [John 6:44], and '...it be granted by my Father [John 6:65]. It is strange that two hear: one despises, the other rises up. Let him who despises impute it to himself; let him that rises up not arrogate it to himself' (3:2:35 , quoting Augustine)
When anyone has been brought into a true knowledge of sin, he then begins truly to hate and abhor sin, the he is heartily displeased with himself, he confesses himself miserable and lost and wishes to be another man . . .when a man is laid low by the consciousness of sin and stricken by the fear of God, and afterwards looks to the goodness of God -- to His mercy, grace, salvation, which is through Christ --- he raises himself up, takes heart, he recovers courage, and as it were, returns from death to life (3:3:3)
We teach that in the saints, until they are divested of mortal bodies, there is always sin; for in their flesh there resides that depravity of inordinate desiring which contends against righteousness (3:3:10)
We teach that all human desires are evil, and charge them with sin --not in that they are natural, but because they are inordinate. Moreover, we hold that they are inordinate because nothing pure or sincere can come forth from a corrupt fountain (3:3:12)
The Spirit is no patron of murder, fornication, drunkenness, pride, contention, avarice, or fraud; but the author of love, modesty, sobriety, moderation, peace, temperance, truth. The Spirit is not giddy --- to run headlong, thoughtless, through right and wrong -- but is full of wisdom and understanding rightly to discern between right and wrong. The Spirit does not stir up man to dissolute and unbridled license, but according as He distinguishes between lawful and unlawful, He teaches man to keep measure and temperance (3:3:14)
I think he has profitted greatly who has learned to be very much displeased with himself, not as as to stick fast in this mire and progress no further, but rather to hasten to God and yearn for Him, in order that, having been engrafted into the life and death of Christ, he may give atttention to continual repentance. Truly, they who are held by a real loathing of sin cannot do otherwise. For no one ever hates sin unless he has previously been seized with a love of righteousness (3:3:20)
Are all sins to be recounted [in the confessional]? Now David who in himself had, I believe, rightly pondered confession of sins, exclaimed, 'Who can understand errors? Cleanse me from my secret errors, O Lord' [Psalm 19:12] . . . he understood all too well how deep is the pit of our sins, how many are the faces of crime, how many heads this hydra bore, and what a long tail it dragged along. Therefore he did not catalogue them. (3:4:16)
Whenever we read that men have obtained forgiveness of sins from Christ we do not read that they confessed into the ear of some priestling (3:4:18)
The children [of God] are beaten with rods, not to pay the penalty for their sins to God, but in order thereby to be led to repentance . . . the sole purpose of God in punishing his church is that the church may be brought low and repent. Therefore, when he deprived Saul of his kingdom, He was punishing for vengeance, when He took away David's little son from him, he was rebuking for amendment (3:4:33)
Banish the thought that there should be any other ransom than the blood of Christ! (3:4:36)
Now indulgences flow from this [false] doctrine of satisfaction. For our opponents pretend that to make satisfaction those indulgence supply what our powers lack. And they go to the mad extreme of defining them as the distribution of the merits of Christ and the martyrs, which the Pope distributes by his bulls. These men are fit to be treated by drugs for insanity rather than to be argued with. (3:5:1)
How could the blood of Christ be more foully profaned than when they [the Papists] deny that it is sufficient for the forgiveness of sins, for reconcilation, for satisfaction --unless the lack of it, as of something dried up and exhausted, be otherwise supplied and filled? (3:5:2)
What is this [indulgences] to leave Christ only a name, to make him another common saintlet who can scarcely be distinguished in the throng? He, he alone, deserved to be preached, he alone set forth; he alone named; he alone looked to when there was a question of obtaining forgiveness of sins, expiation, sanctification. (3:5:3)
When expiation of sins is sought elsewhere than in the blood of Christ, when satisfaction is transferred elsewhere, silence is very dangerous. Therefore we must cry out with the shouting not only of our voices, but of our throats and lungs, that purgatory is a deadly fiction of Satan, which nullifies the cross of Christ, inflicts unbearable contempt upon God's mercy, and overturns and destroys our faith . . . if it is perfectly clear from the preceding discourse that the blood of Christ is the sole satisfaction for the sins of believers, the sole expiation, the sole purgation, what remains but to say that purgatory is simply a dreadful blasphemy against Christ? (3:5:6)
Scripture teaches that this is the difference between unbelievers and believers: the former, like slaves of inveterate and double-dyed wickedness, with chastisement become only worse and more obstinate; the latter, like freeborn sons, attain repentance (3:8:6)
Scripture bids us contemplate in the will of God something far different: namely, first righteousness and equity, then concern for our own salvation. Of this sort, then, are Christian exhortations to patience. Whether poverty or exile, or prison, or insult, or disease, or bereavement, or anything like them torture us, we must think that none of these things happens except by the will and providence of God, that He does nothing except with a well-ordered justice. (3:8:11)
Christ was given to us by God's generosity, to be grasped and possessed by us in faith. By partaking of Him, we principally receive a double grace: namely, that being reconciled to God through Christ's blamelessness, we have in heaven instead of a Judge a gracious Father; and secondly, that sanctified by Christ's Spirit, we may cultivate blamelessness and purity of life (3:9:1)
He is said to be justified in God's sight who is both reckoned righteous in God's judgment, and has been accepted on account of his righteousness. Indeed, as iniquity is abominable to God, so no sinner can find favour in His eyes in so far as he is a sinner and so long as he is reckoned such . . . . . . justified by faith is he who, excluded from the righteousness of works, grasps the righteousness of Christ through faith, and clothed in it, appears in God's sight, not as a sinner, but as a righteous man. . . .it consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ's righteousness (3:9:2)
Faith of itself does not possess power of justifying, but only in so far as it receives Christ. For if faith justified of itself or through some intrinsic power, so to speak, as it is always weak and imperfect it would effect this only in part; thus the righteousness that conferred a fragment of salvation upon us would be defective. (3:9:7)
If anyone should infer from this [Acts 20:28] that the blood whereby sins have been expiated is divine and of the divine nature, who could bear such a foul error? (3:9:8)
Justification must be different from reformation into newness of life [Rom 6:4] for God so begins this second point in His elect, and progresses in it gradually and sometimes slowly, throughout life, that they are always liable to the judgment of death before His tribunal. But He does not justify in part, but liberally, so that they may appear in heaven as if endowed with the purity of Christ. (3:9:11)
The heart cannot be opened to receive his mercy unless it be utterly empty of all opinion of its own worth (3:12:7)
Arrogance arises from a foolish persuasion of our own righteousness, when man thinks that he has something meritorious to command him before God (3:12:8)
We must hold this as a universal principle: whoever glories in himself, glories against God (3:13:2)
And let no man here allege that he does not glory in himself at all when without arrogance he recognises his own righteousness. For there can be no such estimation without engendering confidence, and no confidence without giving birth to glorying (3:13:2)
Man cannot without sacrilege claim for himself even a crumb of righteousness, for just as much is plucked and taken away from the glory of God's righteousness (3:13:2)
Those who have no part in Christ, whatever they may be, whatever they may do or undertake, yet hasten all their lives to desruction and to the judgment of death (3:14:3)
Since there is no sanctification apart from communion with Christ, it is evident that they are evil trees; that they can bear fruit beautiful and comely to the sight and even sweet to the taste, but not at all good. From this we easily discern that whatever a man thinks, plans or carries out before he is reconciled to God through faith is accursed, not only of no value to righteousness, but surely deserving condemnation (3:14:4)
Scripture everywhere proclaims that God finds nothing in man to arouse Him to do good to him, but that He comes first to man in His free generosity. (3:14:5)
Let us not suppose that we bring anything to the Lord, but the sheer disgrace of need and emptiness (3:14:5)
Who of us can boast that he has appealed to God by his own righteousness when our first capacity for well-doing flows from regeneration? For, as we have by nature been created, oil will sooner be pressed from a stone than any good work from us. It is truly wonderful that man, condemned to such disagrace, dares still assume he has anything left (3:14:5)
Our ill-will is such that it never yields to God that which is His, unless it is powerfully compelled (3:14:6)
However we may have been redeemed by Christ, until we are engrafted into His fellowship by the calling of the Father, we are both heirs of darkness and death and enemies of God. For Paul teaches that we are not cleansed and washed of our uncleanness by Christ's blood, except when the Spirit works that cleansing in us (3:14:6)
What can sinners, estranged from God, bring forth except what is hateful to His judgment? All ungodly men, and especially all hypocrites, are puffed up with this stupid assurance, because, however much they recognise that their hearts teem with impurities, still if they bring forth any well-seeming works, they think these worthy not to be despised by God. Hence arises the pernicious error that, convicted of a wicked and evil mind, they still cannot be compelled to confess themselves empty of righteousness. Even when they acknowledge themselves unrighteous because they cannot deny it, they still claim for themselves some righteousness (3:14:7)
Now let the hypocrites go, and keeping wickedness wrapped up in their hearts, let them try to win God's favour by works! In this way they will more and more anger Him (3:14:8)
Christ's righteousness, which as it alone is perfect alone can bear the sight of God, must appear in court on our behalf, and stand surety in judgment. (3:14:12)
Men's whole righteousness, gathered together in one heap, could not make compensation for a single sin (3:14:13)
Scripture everywhere proclaims that the efficient cause of our obtaining eternal life is the mercy of the Heavenly Father and His freely given love towards us. Surely the material cause is Christ, with His obedience, through which He acquired righteousness for us. What shall we say is the formal or instrumental cause but faith? (3:14:17)
There is no doubt that whatever is praisworthy in works is God's grace: there is not a drop that we ought by rights to ascribe to ourselves (3:15:3)
What sort of foundation have we in Christ? Was He the beginning of our salvation in order that its fulfillment might follow from ourselves? Did He only open the way by which we might proceed under our own power? Certainly not. (3:15:5)
What place have these pestilent Sophists left to Christ to exert His power? They say that He deserved for us the first grace, that is, the occasion of deserving, but it is now our part not to fail the occasion offered. O overweening and shameless impiety! Who would have thought that those who professed to the name of Christ would dare so strip Him of His power and virtually trample Him underfoot? The testimony commonly rendered to Him is that whoever believes in Him has been justified. These Sophists teach that no other benefit comes from Him except that they way has been opened for individuals to justify themselves. (3:15:6)
Why, then, are we justified by faith? Because by faith we grasp Christ's righteousness, by which alone we are reconciled to God. Yet you could not grasp this without grasping sanctification also. For, He 'is given to unto us for righteousness, wisdom, sanctification and redemption' [1 Cor 1:30]. Therefore, Christ justifies no one whom He does not at the same time sanctify. (3:16:1)
They make believe that God is satisfied by their wretched satisfactions, which are but dung [Phil 3:8]. We affirm that the guilt of sin is too heavy to be atoned for by such light trifles, that it is too grave an offence against God to be remitted by these worthless satisfactions, that this, then, is the prerogative of Christ's blood alone. They say that righteousness, if ever it fails, is restored and repaired by works of satisfaction. We count it too precious to be matched by any compensation of works; and therefore, to recover it, we must take refuge in God's mercy alone. (3:16:4)
If we cleave to the law, we are bereft of all blessing and a curse hangs over us, one ordained for all transgressors [Deut 27:26]. For the LORD promises nothing except to perfect keepers of His law, and no one of the kind is to be found (3:17:1)
For those things, which are contained in the law, God commended as righteousness; but we do not attain that righteousness save by observing the whole law, and it is broken by every transgression (3:17:7)
Let us be heartily convinced that the Kingdom of Heaven is not servants' wages but sons' inheritance [Eph 1:18], which only they who have been adopted as sons by the Lord shall enjoy [Gal 4:7], and that for no other reason than this adoption [Eph 1:5-6] (3:18:2)
The power of justifying which faith possesses, does not lie in any worth of works. Our justfication rests upon God's mercy alone, and Christ's merit, and faith, when it lays hold of justification, is said to justify. (3:18:8)
Removing, then, mention of law, and laying aside all consideration of works, we should, when jusification is being discussed, embrace God's mercy alone, turn our attention from ourselves and look only to Christ (3:19:2)
No man can righty infer from this that the law is superfluous for believers, since it does not stop teaching and exhorting them to good, even though, before God's judgment seat, it has no place in their consciences (3:19:2)
Let those who infer that we ought to sin because we are not under the law understand that this freedom has nothing to do with them. For its purpose is to encourage us to good (3:19:6)
These things [in Rom 8:26] are not said in order that we, favouring our own slothfulness, may give over the function of prayer to the Spirit of God, and vegetate in that carelessness to which we are all too prone. In this strain we hear the impious voices of certain persons, saying that we should drowsily wait until He takes over our preoccupied minds. But rather our intention is that, loathing our inertia and dullness, we should seek such aid of the Spirit (3:20:5)
Faith grounded upon the Word is the mother of right prayer; hence as soon as it is deflected from the Word, prayer must needs be corrupted (3:20:27)
In contending that we need the advocacy of the saints, they [the Papists] have no stronger argument than to object that we are unworthy to approach God intimately. This we admit to be very true indeed, but we conclude from it, that those who account Christ's intercession worthless unless George and Hippolytus and such spectres come forward leave nothing for Christ to do (3:20:27)
Such songs as have been composed only for sweetness and delight of the ear are unbecoming to the majesty of the church and cannot but displease God to the highest degree (3:20:32)
We must unquestionably feel that, either in public prayer or in private, the tongue without the mind must be highly displeasing to God. (3:20:33)
If -- to make it clear that our salvation comes about solely from God's mere generosity -- we must be called back to the course of election, those who wish to get rid of this are obscuring as malciously as they can what ought to have been gloriously and vociferiously proclaimed, and they tear humility up by the very roots. (3.21.1)
Scripture is the school of the Holy Spirit, in which, as nothing is omitted that is both necessary and useful to know, so nothing is taught but what is expedient to know. (3.21.3)
Let us, I say, permit the Christian man to open his mind and ears to every utterance of God directed to him, provided it be with such restraint that when the Lord closes His holy lips, he also shall at once close the way to inquiry. The best limit of sobriety for us will be not only to follow God's lead always in learning but, when He sets an end to teaching, to stop trying to be wise. (3.21.3)
Profane men, I admit, in the matter of predestination abruptly seize upon something to carp, rail, bark or scoff at. But if their shamelessness deters us, we shall have to keep secret the chief doctrines of the faith, almost none of which they or their like leave untouched by blasphemy. (3.21.4)
But for those who are so cautious or fearful that they desire to bury predestination in order not to disturb weak souls -- with what colour will they cloak their arrogance when they accuse God indirectly of stupid thoughtlessness, as if He had not foreseen the peril that they feel that they have wisely met? Whoever, then, heaps odium, upon the doctrine of predestination openly reproaches God, as if He had unadvisedly let slip something hurtful to the church. (3:21:4)
'Say, 'Since He foresaw that we would be holy, He chose us'', and you will invert Paul's order [Eph 1:4]. Therefore you can safely infer the following: if He chose us that we should be holy, He did not choose us because He foresaw we would be so. For these two notions disagree: that the godly have their holiness from election, and that they arrive at election by reason of works. (3:22:3)
It is very wicked merely to investigate the causes of God's will. For His will is, and rightly ought to be, the cause of all things that are. For if it has any cause, something must precede it, to which it is, as it were, bound; this is unlawful to imagine. For God's will is so much the highest rule of righteousness that whatever He wills by the very fact that He wills it, must be considered righteous. When, therefore, one asks why God has so done, we must reply: because He has willed it. But if you proceed further to ask why He so willed, you are seeking something greater and higher than God's will, which cannot be found. Let men's rashness, then, restrain itself, and not seek what does not exist, lest perhaps it fail to find what does exist. (3:23:2)
We fancy no lawless god who is a law unto himself . . . but we deny that He is liable to render an account; we also deny that we are competent judges to pronounce judgment in this cause acccording to our understanding. (3:23:2)
As all of us are vitiated by sin, we can only be odious to God, and that not from tyrannical cruelty, but from the fairest reckoning of justice. (3:23:3)
Since He [God] foresees future events only by reason of the fact that He decreed that they should take place, they vainly raise a quarrel over foreknowledge, when it is clear that all things take place rather by His determination and bidding. (3:23:6)
Whence does it happen that Adam's Fall irremediably involved so many peoples, together with their infant offspring, in eternal death unless because it so pleased God? Here their tongues, otherwise so loquacious, must become mute. The decree is dreadful indeed, I confess. Yet no one can deny that God foreknew what end man was to have before He created him, and consequently foreknew because He so ordained by His decree. If anyone inveighs against God's foreknowledge at this point, he stumbles rashly and heedlessly. What reason is there to accuse the Heavenly Judge because He was not ignorant of what was to happen? If there is any just or manifest complaint, it applies to predestination. And it ought not to seem absurd for me to say that God not only foreknew the Fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his descendants, but also meted it out in accordance with His own decision. For as it pertains to His wisdom to foreknow everything that is to happen, so it pertains to His might to rule and control everything by His hand. (3:23:7)
For the first man fell because the Lord had judged it to be expedient; why He so judged is hidden from us. Yet it is certain that he so judged because he saw that thereby the glory of His name is duly revealed. Where you hear God's glory mentioned, think of His justice. For whatever deserves praise must be just. (3:23:8)
Scripture denies that God shows partiality toward persons in another sense than that in which they judge. For it means by the word 'person' not a man but those things in a man, which, conspicous to the eye, customarily either produce favour, grace, and dignity, or arouse hatred, contempt, and disgrace. Such things are riches, wealth, power, nobility, office, country, physical beauty and the like. (3:23:10)
Scripture does not speak of predestination with intent to rouse us to boldness that we may try with impious rashness to search out God's unattainable secrets. Rather, its intent is that, humbled and cast down, we may learn to tremble at His judgement and esteem His mercy. It is at this mark that believers aim. But the foul grunting of these swine is duly silenced by Paul. They say they go on unconcerned in their vices; for if they are of the number of the elect, vices will not hinder them from at last being brought into life. Yet Paul teaches that we have been chosen to this end: that we may lead a holy and blameless life [Eph 1:4] (3:23:12)
But lest the flesh boast that it did at least answer Him when He called, and freely offered Himself, He declares that it has no ears to hear, no eyes to see, unless He makes them (3:24:2)
Some make man God's co-worker, to ratify election by his consent. Thus, according to them, man's will is superior to God's plan. As if Scripture taught that we are merely given the ability to believe, and not, rather, faith itself! (3:24:3)
When Scripture teaches that we are illumined according as God has chosen us, what is more absurd or unworthy, than for our eyes to be so dazzled by the briliance of this light as to refuse to be mindful of election? (3:24:3)
Nothing will be ambiguous if we hold fast to what ought to be clear from the foregoing: that there are two kinds of call. There is the general call, by which God invites all equally to Himself through the outward preaching of the word -- even those to whom He holds it out as a savour of death [2 Cor 2:16], and as the occasion for severer condemnation. The other kind of call is special, which He deigns for the most part to give to the believers alone, while by the inward illumination of His Spirit He causes the preached word to dwell in their hearts. Yet sometimes He also causes those whom He illumines only for a time to partake of it; then He justly forsakes them on account of their ungratefulness and strikes them with even greater blindness. (3:24:8)
The elect are gathered into Christ's flock by a call not immediately at birth, and not all at the same time, but according as it pleases God to dispense His grace to them. But before they are gathered unto that Supreme Shepherd, they wander scattered in the wilderness common to all; and they do not differ at all from others except that they are protected by God's especial mercy from rushing headlong into the final ruin of death. (3:24:10)
What of those, then, whom He [God] created for dishonour in life and destruction in death, to become the instruments of His wrath and examples of His severity? That they may come to their end, He sometimes deprives them of the capacity to hear the word; at other times He, rather, blinds and stuns them by the preaching of it. (3:24:12)
When we assert that none undeservedly perish, and that it is by God's freely given kindness that some are released, we have said enough to show forth His glory without the least need of evasion. (3:24:12)
If the same sermon is preached, say, to a hundred people, twenty receive it with the ready obedience of faith, while the rest hold it valueless, or laugh, or hiss, or loathe it. If anyone should reply that this diversity arises out of their malice and perverseness, I still will not be satisfied, because the nature of the former would be occupied with the same malice if God did not correct it by His goodness. (3:24:12)
That the Lord sends His word to many whose blindness He intends to increase cannot indeed be called into question. For what purpose did He cause so many commands to be made upon Pharoah? Is it because He hoped to soften his heart by oft repeated embassies? No, before he began, He had both known and had foretold the outcome [Exodus 4:19] (3:24:13)
He directs His voice to them but in order that they might become even more deaf; He kindles a light but that they may be made more blind; He sets forth a doctrine but that they may grow even more stupid; He employs a remedy but so that they may not be healed. And John, applying this prophecy, states that the Jews could not believe Christ's teaching [John 12:39], for this curse of God hung over them. We cannot gainsay the fact that, to those whom He pleases not to illumine, He transmits His doctrine wrapped in enigmas in order that they may not profit by it, except to be cast into greater stupidity. (3:24:13)
God's grace is tasteless to men until the Holy Spirit brings its savour. (3:24:14)
They who measure divine justice by the standard of human justice are acting perversely (3:24:17)
The chiliasts (millenarians) [who] limited the reign of Christ to a thousand years. Now their fiction is too childish either to need or be worth refutation. And the Apocalypse [Revelation], from which they undoubtedly drew a pretext for their error, does not support them. For the number one thousand [Rev 20:4] does not apply to the eternal blessedness of the church but only to the various disturbances that awaited the church while still toiling on earth. (3:25:5)
How does it come about that God not only makes the sun rise on the good and the evil [Matt 5:45] but that with respect to the uses of the present life His inestimable liberality constantly flows in great plenty? Hence, we surely recognise that the things proper to Christ and His members also pour forth upon the wicked, not to become their lawful possessions, but rather to render them inexcusable. The wicked often experience God's kindness, by remarkable proofs, so as sometimes to put in the shade all the blessings of the pious, yet these lead to their greater condemnation. (3:25:9)
Now, because no description can deal adequately with the gravity of God's vengeance against the wicked, their torments and tortures are figuratively expressed to us by physical things, that is by darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth [Matt 8:12, 22:13], unquenchable fire [Matt 3:12, Mark 9:43, Isaiah 66:24], an undying worm gnawing on the heart [Isaiah 66:24]. By such expressions the Holy Spirit certainly intended to confound all our senses with dread (3:25:12)
BOOK 4: Although the melancholy desolation which confronts us on every side may cry that no remnant of the church is left, let us know that Christ's death is fruitful, and that God miraculously keeps His church as in a hiding place (4:1:2)
Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ's institution, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists. (4:1:9)
As soon as falsehood breaks into the citadel of religion and the sum of necessary doctrine is overturned and the use of the sacraments is destroyed, surely the death of the church follows. (4:2:1)
Since conditions are such under Popery, one can understand how much of the church remains there. Instead of the ministry of the Word, a perverse government compounded by lies rules there, which partly extinguishes the pure light, partly chokes it. The foulest sacrilege has been introduced in place of the Lord's Supper. The worship of God has been deformed by a diverse and unbearable mass of superstitions. Doctrine (apart from which Christianity cannot stand)
has been entirely buried and driven out. Public assemblies have become schools of idolatry and ungodliness. In withdrawing from deadly participation in so many misdeeds, there is accordingly no danger that we be snatched away from the church of Christ. (4:2:2)
The LORD nowhere recognises any temple as His save where His Word is heard and scrupulously observed (4:2:3)
The Roman pontiff we make the leader and standard bearer of that wicked and abominable kingdom. The fact that his [the Antichrist's] seat is placed in the Temple of God signifies that his reign was not to be such as to wipe out either the name of Christ or of the church. From this it therefore is evident that we by no means deny that the churches under his tyranny remain churches. But these he [the Pope, the Antichrist] has profaned by his sacrilegous impiety, afflicted by his inhuman domination, corrupted and well nigh killed by his evil and deadly doctrines, which are like poisoned drinks. In them Christ lies hidden, half buried, the gospel overthrown, piety scattered, the worship of God nearly wiped out. In them, briefly, everything is so confused that there we see the face of Babylon rather than that of the Holy City of God. To sum up, I call them churches to the extent that the Lord womderfully preserves in them a remnant of His people, however woefully dispersed and scattered, and to the extent that some marks of the church remain --- especially those marks whose effectiveness neither the devil's wiles, nor human depravity can destroy. But on the other hand, because in them those marks have been erased to which we should pay particular regard in this discourse, I say that every one of their congregations and their whole body lack the lawful form of the church. (4:2:12)
To bind Christ, the Spirit and the church to a place, so that whoever may rule there, even if he be a devil, is still considered the vicar of Christ and head of the church because it was once Peter's see --- this, I say, is not only impious and insulting to Christ, but extremely absurd and alien to common sense! (4:7:29)
Even if Rome had once been the head of the churches, today it is not worthy of being regarded among the smallest toes of the church's feet (4:7:29)
Not one syllable of purgatory, of intercession of saints, of auricular confession, and the like will be found in Scripture. (4:9:14)
The church does not have the right of the sword to punish or compel, not the authority to force; not imprisonment, nor the other punishments which the magistrate commonly inflicts. (4:11:3)
They who lead a filthy and infamous life may not be called Christians, to the dishonour of God, as if His holy church were a conspiracy of wicked and abandonned men. For since the church itself is the body of Christ it cannot be corrupted by such foul and decaying members without some disgrace falling upon its Head. (4:12:5)
We must preserve the order of the Lord's Supper, that it may not be profaned by being administered indiscriminately. For it is very true that he to whom its distribution has been committed, if he knowingly and willingly admits an unworthy person whom he could rightfully turn away, is as guilty of sacrilege as if he had cast the Lord's body to dogs. (4:12:5)
It is not our task to erase from the number of the elect those who have been expelled from the church, or to despair as if they were already lost. It is lawful to regard them as estranged from the church, and thus from Christ -- but only as for such time as they remain separated. However, if they also display more stubbornness than gentleness, we should still commend them to the Lord's judgment, hoping for better things of them in the future than we see in the present. Nor should we on this account cease to call upon God in their behalf. (4:12:9)
God, whenever it pleases Him, changes the worst men into the best, engrafts the alien, and adopts the stranger into the church. And the Lord does this to frustrate men's opinion and restrain their rashness --- which, unless it is checked, ventures to assume for itself a greater right of judgment than it deserves. (4:12:9)
The Lord, in order better to call us away from inventing new works, has included the entire praise of righteousness in simple obedience to His will. If these things are true, one can readily judge that all feigned acts of worship, which we ourselves invent to deserve God's favour, are not at all acceptable to Him, no matter how well they may please us. And surely the Lord Himself in many passages not only openly rejects but deeply abhors them. (4:13:1)
It is God with whom we have to deal, who is so pleased by our obedience that He declares all self-made religion, however splendid and beautiful it may be in men's eyes, accursed. [Col 2:23]. If all voluntary worship whch we ourselves devise apart from God's commandment is hateful to Him, it follows that no worship can be acceptable to Him except that which is approved by His Word. (4:13:2)
If we ascribe to creatures either the increase or the confirmation of faith, injustice is done to the Spirit of God, Who should be recognised as its sole Author. (4:14:10)
The schools of the Sophists have taught with remarkable agreement that the sacraments of the new law [those now used in the Christian church] justify and confer grace, provided that we do not set up a barrier of mortal sin. How deadly and pestilential this notion is cannot be expressed. . . . . . Of a certainty it is diabolical. For in promising a righteousness apart from faith, it hurls souls headlong to destruction. Secondly, because it draws the cause of righteousness from the sacraments, it binds men's pitiable minds [of themselves more than enough inclined to earth] in this superstition, so that they repose in the appearance of a physical thing rather than in God Himself. (4:14:14)
We must utterly reject the fiction of those who consign all the unbaptised to eternal death! (4:16:26)
For who can think himself redeemed by Christ's death when he has seen new redemption in the Mass? Who can trust that his sins are forgiven, when he has seen a new forgiveness? And it is no way out to say that we obtain forgiveness of sins in the Mass solely because it has already been purchased by Christ's death. This amounts to nothing else than to boast that we have been redeemed by Christ on condition that we redeem ourselves; for this is the kind of doctrine that is spread abroad by Satan's ministers, and today is defended with shouting, sword and fire: that we, when we offer Christ to the Father in the Mass, by this act of oblation obtain forgiveness of sins and are made participants in Christ's Passion. What now remains of Christ's Passion, except that it is an example of redemption, by which we learn that we are our own redeemers? (4:18:6)
Therefore I conclude that it is a most wicked infamy and unbearable blasphemy, both against Christ and against the sacrifice which He made for us through His death on the cross, for anyone to suppose that by repeating the oblation he obtains pardon of sins, appeases God and acquires righteousness. (4:18:14)
The Mass, taken in the highest purity it can claim, without is appurtenances, from root to top, swarms with every sort of impiety, blasphemy, idolatry, and sacrilege. (4:18:18)
Those miraculous powers and manifest workings, which were dispensed by the laying on of hands have ceased; and they have rightly lasted only for a time. For it was fitting that the new preaching of the Gospel and the new kingdom of Christ should be illumined and magnified by unheard-of and extraordinary miracles. When the Lord ceased from these, He did not utterly forsake His Church, but declared that the magnificence of His Kingdom and the dignity of His Word had been excellently enough disclosed. (4:19:6)
The apostles laid on hands for the time when it pleased the Lord that the visible graces of the Holy Spirit be distributed at their prayers, not in order that their descendants should in mimicry only and without profit counterfeit a cold and empty sign, as these apes do. (4:19:7)
I boldly declare this, not from myself, but from the Lord: Those who call oil ''the oil of salvation'' forswear the salvation which is in Christ; they deny Christ, and they have no part in God's Kingdom. For oil is for the belly and the belly for oil: the Lord will destroy both. [cf. 1 Cor 6:13] (4:19:7)
Obviously they [the Papists] are attempting something ingenious: to shape one religion out of Christianity and Judaism and paganism by sewing patches together. Their unction therefore stinks because it lacks salt, that is the Word of God. (4:19:31)
SERMONS ON GALATIANS, by John Calvin (1509-1564)
SERMON 1:
If a man intend to be heard, it must not be alleged, that he is witty and skillful, or that he has seen or heard much and is a man of great experience: all those things are but smoke, when it comes to the leading of us to the Kingdom of Heaven. (p.11)
All the cankerworms of his [the Pope's] Clergy who name themselves Prelates, together with all the horned beasts and all the rabble of Maskers in the Popedom, will needs challenge that honourable title: and (if a man wish to believe them upon their single word) they be all of them descended of the Apostles. But yet for all that, it behooves us to consider what likeness and agreeableness they have to the Apostles. (p.12-13)
They that will be taken for Bishops and Prelates must teach: and if they be Idols and dumb dogs, it is certain that they do shamefully mock God's name and abuse His majesty, so also men may reject them and despise them, yea and that they ought to be held as accursed, because they pretend God's name falsely. (p. 17-18)
If we do not willingly honour our Lord Jesus Christ by accepting his doctrine for certain and infallible: God is set at naught, and we cannot say that our intent is to worship him, for he will reject all our doings. And why? For (as I said afore) it is enough to prove us rebels, if we separate the Son from His Father. (p. 20)
When it pleases God to send us mortal men, and to send forth the message and inestimable treasure of His Gospel in brittle vessels, and yet notwithstanding will have us to receive them, is it not a mockery to say, if Jesus Christ were here with us and in our company, we would obey him? For if heaven and earth must be obliged to quake under him, and his Majesty be known even to the Devils of hell: and yet for all that, we continue blockish, and pretend that he is too far off from us: yet notwithstanding our Lord Jesus shows us sufficiently that he has not forsaken us, seeing we have the Gospel preached unto us. (p. 22)
SERMON 2
True it is that God gives oftentimes some sign of his love to all men in general, but yet is all Adam's offspring cut off from him, till we be grafted in again by Jesus Christ. Therefore there is one kind of love which God bears towards all men, for that he has created them after his own image, in nourishing them and having a care of their life. But all this is nothing in respect of his special goodness which he keeps in store for his chosen, and for those that are of his flock. Howbeit not for any worthiness which he finds in them, but because it pleases him to accept them for his own. (p. 26)
Although we lived at our ease in all pleasures and delights, yet should we be unhappy, until such times as we be fully assured in our consciences, that God loves us, and that we be in his favour. (p. 27)
The sacrifice whereby our Lord Jesus Christ has reconciled us to God his Father is so sufficient that it behooves us to lay up all our trust therein and not to seek any other means. (p. 32)
In Papistry it will well enough be granted, that Jesus Christ is the Redeemer of the world, but yet wherewithal every man seeks to compound with God, and to make amends by himself. (p. 32)
To be short, until such time as we be sure that there is none other washing wherewith to scour out the spots of our iniquities, but the blood which our Lord Jesus Christ has shed, and wherewith we be rinsed through the Holy Ghost: it is certain that we can never come freely unto God, nor rest upon his favour and love, but shall ever be wandering in our own imaginations: and that shall be a due payment for our misbelief, in that we have not yielded our Lord Jesus Christ the honour that he deserved. (p. 33)
Let us mark also the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, how that seeing he has given Himself after that sort for our sins, he will not suffer his death and passion to be unprofitable, nor the sacrifice which he has once offered, to be void and of none effect, without bringing forth fruit in us. (p. 36-37)
In us there is nothing to be found but unrighteousness. Therefore we must either be withdrawn from ourselves, or else we shall never be able to come nigh unto God. What shall then become of all the blind wretches, which bear themselves in hand that they be able to work wonders with their freewill, their virtues, their wisdom and I wot not what else? (p. 41)
Our Lord Jesus Christ is not come to give us occasion to abuse the grace which he has purchased for us, for that were a mocking of him to his face. (p. 42)
Some fantastical persons have imagined such a perfection, that when we be once regenerated in our Lord Jesus Christ, we have no more need of the forgiveness of our sins. Insomuch that they say we keep the world still to their ABCs, when we preach that we cannot become righteous but by faith, nor come in God's favour but by his forgiving of our sins, and by his covering of them through his own goodness. But that is a devilish pride, and yet among Papists there is no more praise than that given unto God's goodness. So then, let us abhor such harebrains, and all their blasphemies, when they go about to bewitch us so far, as to make us believe that we have no more need to be pitied of God, nor to have our sins forgiven us. (p. 44)
SERMON 3:
But now will the Papists lustily reply, that they be no backsliders, nor have forsaken Christ. Yea, but our Lord Jesus Christ is no ghost, he cannot transform himself after the appetites of men. To be short, he cannot be separated from his Church. When soever the Papists utter this saying, they rob Jesus Christ of all authority. For (say they) if there be but one Mediator, what should become of the He-saints which are patrons, and of the She-saints which are our Advocates? If any man speak to them of the sacrifice whereby our Lord Jesus Christ has once purchased perfect righteousness for all the faithful, what (say they) and must not Mass be said every day, and Christ be offered up new again there, to appease God's wrath? If a man tell them of the free forgiveness of sins: and what shall become (say they) of our own satisfactions whereby we deserve to have pity at God's hand? Again, if a man say to them, that all our goodness comes of our regeneration through God's Spirit, and that there is nothing but spottiness and rebelliousness in us, till God have changed us: how so (answer they) and what shall then become of our own freewill? To be short, Jesus Christ shall be named often enough, and men will reserve unto him the title of Redeemer. But in the mean season his office shall be parted, and put to the spoil, and every man shall catch a portion of it to himself. Besides this they imagine that the Saints and Angels of Heaven are as patrons to them, and finally they have infinite ways (to their own seeming) whereby to come unto God. But hereupon we may well conclude, that the Holy Ghost does justly avow them to be backsliders, and to have given over Jesus Christ, and to be strangers to him. (p. 52-53)
Ye shall see many that will not speak openly against the doctrine of the Gospel, but will suffer the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ to be preached. If a man ask them what they find fault with: nothing, say they. But let an Altar be never so soon set up, and puppets upon it, and by and by they run to it, they must needs go hear Mass, and see all the rest of the Popish trash, they care not which way the world go, and when all those disorders are set afore them, they think not that there is any difference at all. But let us mark that such beastliness reveals that there is no faith in them. (p. 61)
The Papists have devised an Implicate faith (as they term it) and that is enough for them: and although the wretched souls wot not what they mean themselves, yet notwithstanding, behold (they say) I refer myself to our mother the holy Church, I believe as she believes. But such folk show openly that they have no faith at all, nor know by what means to be saved. (p. 61-62)
SERMON 4:
Whatsoever is added or patched to the doctrine of the Gospel by man's device, so as they cannot content themselves with the simpleness thereof, but that they do vary from it, is every whit of it mere falsehood. And therefore let us shun it as poison, for surely no poison can be so deadly as a false doctrine. (p.79)
When any man comes to a sermon, let him first and foremost make his reckoning to be rebuked as meet is, and let him understand that it is for his profit that he is not soothed. And if he have itching ears, let him lay them away from him, assuring himself that else he is foreclosed, so as he shall never receive the doctrine to his profit and instruction. Therefore, let us all suffer our sores to be rubbed, and ourselves to be condemned, and to be dealt with clean contrary to our liking. Thus you see how every of us ought to be prepared, if we purpose to be scholars to the Son of God, and to yield to him the mastery which belongs to him. And we ought to endeavour this thing so much the more, forasmuch as we see our nature drives us to the contrary way. For we be blinded by self love, and every of us covets to be honoured: but honoured we cannot be, but by flattery and lying. (p. 86)
To be short, it is certain that a man does always seek his own death, when he would have men to soothe him. (p. 88)
SERMON 5:
I have told you heretofore, that if a man seek to be heard for his own skill, for his great and deep understanding, for his fair speech, or for his great eloquence: all those things are nothing but filthiness and dung, and that God only must have that authority and honour at our hands: and that forasmuch as it pleases God to speak to us by the mouth of His only Son: only Jesus Christ must have the preeminence to be the master and teacher of all his, and we likewise must become his flock to hear his voice. (p. 99)
The things that men have invented of their own heads are but stinking dung before him. And yet for all this, every man alleges this foolish brag, that he meant to serve God. But therefore it is said in one word by the prophet Isaiah, who has required this at your hands? (p. 104)
What did Freewill do in Saint Paul for the bringing of him to the obedience of the Gospel? Nothing, but God was pleased to thunder down upon him from heaven, to drive out the pride and presumption that was in him. He was not only drawn by the hand, but also God did cast so think scales upon his eyes, that he was as a blind wretch. (p. 107)
SERMON 6:
Nowadays all Religion is decayed, and there is nothing but hellish confusion in Popery. For there is talking enough of our Lord Jesus Christ, but after what sort? Know they his power? Can they tell to what end he is sent of God his Father, and what benefits he brings us? No whit at all. He shall be called the Saviour of the world, and in the meanwhile every man seeks his salvation in himself, or at some Saint's hand of his own forging. (p. 128-129)
SERMON 7:
If men see some one person recant, at whose hand great constancy was looked for: then are many poor souls shaken, and they wot not what to say. True it is that we ought not to rest upon men: but yet for all that (as we shall declare again anon) there are many that have need to be confirmed by good example. (p. 143)
SERMON 8:
Let us mark, that those dogs [the Judaizers] pretended not to reject utterly the whole doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ: but rather bear the name and title of Christianity. Howbeit in the meanwhile their intent was to have a half-assed Gospel, which should be neither fish nor flesh (as they say) but a medley of their own device: like as at this day there are still too many such folk in the world, who would happily forge and build a kind of Religion after their own fashion, taking a piece of the pure truth, and mingling many lies and dreams with it. (p. 156)
It is not without urgent cause, yea and extreme necessity, that we strive against the Popish tyranny about ceremonies, considering that our Lord Jesus Christ has not his deserved preeminence, so long as men busy their wits about those small trifles, and that moreover their wretched consciences are always in unquietness without end or ceasing. (p. 164)
We must fight stoutly against that hellish tyranny, and against those pelting trash trumpery and illusions of Satan, whereby he would happily either quite deface the Gospel, or else so turmoil it as a man should not know which is the pure truth. (p. 164)
Peace and friendship are an amiable thing among men. They be so indeed, and we ought to seek them to the uttermost of our power. But yet for all that, we must set such store by God's truth, that if all the world should be set on fire for the maintenance thereof, we should not stick at it. (p. 165)
It is no reason that God should be robbed of His right, when men seek to knit themselves together. (p. 166-167)
Let us be peaceable as near as we can: let us relent of our own right: let us not strive for these worldly goods, honour and reputation: let us bear all wrongs and outrages, rather than be moved to any debate through our own fault. But in the meanwhile, let us fight for God's truth with tooth and nail. (p. 169)
There are a sort of fantastical heads, which would have a Reformation, wherein the Pope and Mahumet and Jesus Christ should be mingled together, so as men might no more discern which is which. For all is one to them so the world be agreed upon it: they bear no reverence at all unto God, and that is the cause why all things have been so turmoiled and confounded in our days. (p. 172)
God's word must continue always unimpeached, or otherwise all the pretence of concord, that men can make, shall be but abomination before God. And why? For it were better that all things should go to havoc and confusion in the world, than to abide that God's word (being so precious and holy thing as it is) should in any wise be perverted. (p. 173)
SERMON 9:
Ye ask what holy water is, it is an unhallowing of baptism. (p. 178)
But as for the Holy water of the Papists, what else is it than an endless baptising of ourselves? As touching the Mass, it is so villainous and outrageous a treachery, that no man can come at it, but he must defile himself by renouncing the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. (p. 178)
We must not under the shadow of peace and concord betray God's truth, and make a mingle-mangle of it, so as men may not know who ought to rule the roost here beneath, nor what law is to be followed. (p. 181)
If a man has been a wild beast, and past all hope of being brought to God, and yet afterward becomes as a sheep, and submits himself willingly to the obedience of our Lord Jesus Christ: it cannot be but that the hand of God has passed upon him. (p. 187)
As touching the words where Saint Paul says that God accepts not any man's person: it is all one as if he had said, that God is not tied to the things that are seen of us, or which we have in estimation, but that he is free to bestow his gifts on whom he desires, and how he desires. Many men, when they hear this word Person spoken of, do beguile themselves, and wrest it against the meaning of the Holy Ghost. And thereupon many men suppose that God accepts not any one man more than another, for then (think they) he should be partial. But see how they darken God's free election: as who should say he were beholden to men, and that if he chose any of them, the same ought to be general without exception, insomuch that (to their seeming) God's grace flies in the air like a Tennis ball, and it is in our power and freewill to reach out our hand to catch it, and apply it to our use. Thus are diverse besotted, yea even with too gross ignorance, because they understand not what is meant by the word person. But the holy Scripture tells us, that God in vouchsafing to choose men, and to set them in a more excellent state, and to bestow the gifts of his Holy Spirit upon them, stays not upon anything at all in the party, nor passes whether he be white or black, old or young, noble or unnoble, rich or poor, beloved or behated of men, fair or foul. God thinks not upon any of these small trifles: for if he should delay to love us till he found some good thing in us: he should let us alone still in such plight as we be. (p. 188-189)
True it is that whereas men gaze upon the outward appearance and fair show of things: God accepts a good conscience, God looks at the uncorruptness of the heart. But yet must he be pleased to put the same into it: for at the first he shall not find it is us. (p. 190)
SERMON 10:
Whensoever God’s truth is defaced or when any man turns away from the pure simplicity of the Gospel, we must not in any wise spare him, but although the whole world should set itself against us, yet must we maintain the case with invincible constancy, without bending for any creature. (p. 206)
When the authority of men tends to the defacing of the truth of the Gospel, we must fall to striving and not regard any creature. (p. 206)
There are many that would willingly row between two streams, and although they perceive the abuse and corruptions, yet would they bear on both sides, and all to purchase peace as they themselves say, whereas in the end there must needs follow great confusion when men do so heave one at another. Therefore to appease all discord, they would happily have a parting of stakes and minglemangle made, and that every man should bow on his side. But in the meanwhile, will God give over his right at the pleasure of man? Or may we confederate ourselves to his prejudice? (p. 206)
The truth of the Gospel is so precious in His [God’s] sight, as He will not have any creature to be spared for it. (p. 207)
And why then shall we seek to please mortal men, when they would disguise the pureness of the Gospel, and mingle their own inventions with it, and in so doing make our Lord Jesus Christ their underling, that they might still keep possession of their errors? Is it meet that we should yield up our places to them? A mischief light upon such concord, for it shall always be cursed of God . (p. 207)
According as every of us loves his neighbour, so let him learn to use the freeness of speech, which Saint Paul shows us here (Gal 2:11). And specially when God’s truth is in hand, let no man be spared, let the zeal of God get the upper hand in us, and although we should purchase displeasure, and run in danger of many slanders and backbitings, yet ought we nevertheless to undertake the challenge. For there is no excuse for us if we play the traitors, by dissembling when the truth of the Gospel is falsified. (p. 211)
Men would have a half-faced Gospel, and bear themselves in hand, that they be discharged before God, so the name of Christianity run roundly in their mouths. Like at this day the word Gospel is taken to be meetly honourable among the Papists: but yet the Gospel which they have is but a bastard gospel, because they have put their own collops and gobbets to it. (p. 213)
There must be no adding nor diminishing of the things which the Son of God has taught us, but every man must be contented to hear him speak, and let him have his mouth open. Let us on our side open our ears and be heedful to receive whatsoever he says: and let no man presume to have an oar in the boat, to say, this would be good, or this or that should be done. (p. 214)
When we see that such as labour to entangle God’s truth, or to mingle their own fancies with it do draw folk to them, and begin to have some train and tail following them: then it is high time for us to be fiery in fighting, for if we bear it, it is certain that we are guilty of the decay of the Church that shall come upon it, and whereas we think to shift it off, God will not grant us that grace, forasmuch as we have been too cold and reckless. (p. 215)
SERMON 11:
It is a devilish traitorousness when men presume upon their own power, as though they had any spark of righteousness in themselves. And besides that, it is an entering into the gulf of hell, when we think to get salvation by our own works. For we renounce the death and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, where we should seek all our righteousness. (p. 226)
Paul treats here of the manner of justification before God, that is to say, of the mean whereby we be brought into his favour, because it is the principal point which we ought to learn, and without that, all the religion or devotion, that can be named, is but smoke and leasings. (p. 226)
God has reserved to Himself alone the authority and prerogative to be called the lawmaker, to the intent that no man should usurp any such preeminence in the Church. (p. 227)
If we declare that all our satisfaction is in the things that are purchased for us by the death and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therewithal God utterly mislikes all that is of our own invention, and he will be served with obedience: then do we lay forth the case as it ought to be, and may bring it to a sure and certain conclusion. (p. 228)
The law can bring us nothing but death, by reason of our infirmity. (p. 231)
Saint Paul’s debating of the case of Ceremonies is because these hypocrites which took upon them to match themselves with God and to have the praise of their salvation themselves did always busy their heads about small trifles, and came not to the chief point, which is to enter into their own consciences. Like as at this day in the Popedom they that do so much preach their own merits and say that we must purchase Paradise by our own works and that although we are sinners yet we have a way to discharge ourselves to Godward by satisfactions: what allege they? When those great Rabbins go about to set men after that manner upon the stage to be honoured as Idols, and when they have made their great prefaces of freewill, of their own virtues, of their satisfactions, and of their merits or deservings: what bring they? Exhort they men to live chastely, without doing other men wrong, or without any covetous desire, so as every of us should content himself with that he has, be patient in adversity, bear wrongs and reproaches, and in all things to show ourselves to be the Disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ by forsaking ourselves? There is not one word with them of these things. But the good works that they set afore us are, that we must go devoutly to Mass, take holy water before we enter into the Church, becross ourselves, kneel down before a stock, worship a puppet, gad on pilgrimages, keep such a feastful day, found a Trental, deal doles for the dead, and do this and that. So then, all these hypocrites which will needs become righteous by their own works, have nothing but gewgaws and dotages, and yet for all that, they think themselves so holy and perfect, that nothing is amiss in them. They think that God ought to content himself with the great number of murlimews and countenances which they make. But that is not the coin wherewith he must be paid, for his law is spiritual. (p232-233
Paul disputes of the Ceremonies of the Law, as they were put to him, and yet does he nevertheless cut home to the bottom, that is to wit, he proves that men are stripped stark naked from all righteousness, and cannot bring anything unto God, but must beg at His hand, confessing that there is nothing in them but utter beggary and penury. (p. 234)
Let us bear in mind, that if we think to be made righteous by baptism, we defile the thing which God has appointed to our salvation. And why? Baptism does but teach us that there is nothing but filth and uncleanness in us. For why do we wash our hands, faces and bodies, but to make them clean from the spots that are in them? Now it is said that Baptism is a washing of us: and therefore it follows that when we come to Baptism, or when any of us bring his children to be baptised, we declare that the children are already damned and forlorn even from their mother’s womb, and that they be a cursed seed, so they must be obliged to break cleanness, not by their own purchase, but by receiving it, forasmuch as it is offered them in our Lord Jesus Christ. (p. 237)
When we come to the Lord’s Supper, what come we to do? Come we to get anything of God by our own desert? No: but we confess that we be like wretched dead men, which come to seek our life out of ourselves, and therefore must be obliged to have the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ for our meat, and his blood for our drink, and all things in him which we lack in ourselves. (p. 238)
SERMON 12:
Although it has always been a common opinion in the world, that by living well men might bind God to be good to them, yet did they foully deceive themselves therein. For do what we can, God shall not be any whit at all beholden unto us, because we owe unto him whatsoever we be able to do. (p. 240-241)
We cannot be justified by grace except we forsake our own merits: and that is a thing well worthy to be marked. For the Papists will well enough confess that we be justified by faith, howbeit they add that it is but partly. But that gloss mars all. (p. 246)
The law presupposes that if we have once fulfilled God’s commandments, we shall be taken for good servants, and that he will pay us the wages which he has promised, and faith presupposes us to be wretched, damned, and forlorn folk, and that we must be obliged to seek things that we lack in Jesus Christ. (p. 246)
If anybody will have a man to be justified both by the law and by the Gospel too, he does but turmoil and mingle things together, and it is all one as if he should set heaven and earth together by the ears. To be short, it were much easier to mingle fire and water together, than to say that we can purchase any grace at God’s hand by our own deservings, and therewithal also have need to be succoured by our Lord Jesus Christ. (p. 248)
If men look upon themselves in their own nature, they shall find nothing but evil, notwithstanding all the fair shows they can have. They may well be highly praised and esteemed in the world, and they may well beguile themselves by vain self-soothings: but until such time as God has wrought in them to change them, it is certain that there shall be nothing in them but filthiness, and all the virtues that men make account of, shall be stark vice, to lead them to destruction and to plunge them in Hell. (p. 257-258)
SERMON 13:
In Baptism at these days, if we think ourselves to made clean by the water: what an abuse is it? All these things must serve to lead us to the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. (p. 265)
If a man speak of the Gospel to such as think they serve God and hope to win heaven by their own deserts: they be grieved at it because that that gate is shut against them by the presumptuousness which they have conceived aforehand, saying: What, I pray? Shall I have lost my time when I have been so devout, all my life long? As for the man that shall have heard a Mass or twain, or mumbled up a sort of prayers, or gone on pilgrimage, or have lashed out his money and substance (without sparing) upon pardons, indulgences, and other such things: If one tell him that we be all wretched, and that there is none other thing for us to lean unto but the mere grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that all that ever we are able to bring unto God is but filthy and loathsome: he will storm and reply, Is it possible that God should have no regard of so great pains as I take to serve him? Must not all of it pass on mine account, and be allowed me to my salvation? They would willingly accuse God, yea and we shall see many that will not stick to rail upon him with open mouth, because they be loathe to lose that which they have done. (p. 266-267)
To what end was the law given? To set the rule of good life before our eyes, and the rule is called the righteousness which God allows. Mark that for one point. Secondly, the law ought to be as a looking-glass to us, wherein to behold our own deformities, blemishes, foulness, filthiness and iniquities, so far out of all order, as we may be as it were swallowed up in despair at the sight of them. (p. 273)
All they which deceive themselves by any opinion of their own merits never tasted what the Law of God is, nor what it means. (p. 276)
If a man tell them that we must seek our salvation in Jesus Christ: yea they say?. And what shall become then of our Freewill? What should become of our own merits and satisfactions? To their seeming it were much better to pluck the sun out of the sky, yea and God out of his seat too, than to bereave man of that prerogative. (p. 276)
SERMON 14:
If Heaven and earth were turned upside down, it were not so great a confusion, as to imagine that the Son of God has suffered in vain. (p. 297)
If we intend to enjoy the grace that is contained in the Gospel, we must utterly give over the fond opinion of our own merits. (p. 302)
The Papists will grant well enough that we be not able to purchase salvation, except we be helped by our Lord Jesus Christ: howbeit they imagine that men may half save themselves, and look for what is lacking to be supplied by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and so they suppose themselves to have a good and available starting-hole. But in saying so, they show themselves deadly enemies of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and upholders of the case and quarrel of the false apostles, and deceivers that had corrupted, deflowered and falsified the pure truth in the Church of Galatia. (p. 303)
After they [the Papists] have once granted themselves to be wretched sinners, and have to be succoured by our Lord Jesus Christ, and that his death and passion are available to make them way unto God: they interlace their own freewill, and their preparations, and thereunto say that they deserve on their side, and although Jesus Christ help them, yet he does not do all himself. And in very deed that is the flat doctrine of the Papists word for word. (p. 304)
SERMON 15:
If we desire to find a pleasant taste in God’s word, we on our side must be teachable and not stubborn. For we must call to mind how it is written in the Eighteenth Psalm, that God will always deal mildly with such as be of a mild spirit, and that he will be rough and sharp towards such as use stubbornness, and cannot abide to submit themselves unto him. All they then which have a neck of brass, and cannot find in their hearts to stoop under the obedience of God, shall find themselves to be matched with too strong an adversary, and that they must needs be bruised and broken in pieces if they will not bow. (p. 310)
Many will brag that they be well learned in God’s word, but the true trial to know whether it be so or no, is if we perceive how great need we have, that God should pour own his mercy upon us, to succour us by drawing us out of the gulf of Hell, and thereupon conclude that we cannot be cleansed and washed from any of all of our spots, but by the blood of God’s Son: nor obtain righteousness but by the obedience which he has yielded: nor have any satisfaction for us but by the sacrifice that he has offered: nor come in God’s favour but by his means: nor open our mouths to call upon him but by his intercession. (p. 313-314)
When the Gospel is preached, then Jesus Christ is painted out lively, and we must look upon him, not with the fleshly eyes of our bodies, but with the spiritual eyes of our faith. Then seeing it is so, let us learn that we have no need of Images and puppets to teach us what is necessary for our salvation. (p. 320)
Our Lord Jesus Christ is set forth unto us there, to the end that we seeing that there is not one drop of goodness in us, should seek it in him, yea even all wholly and not by pieces. (p. 327)
Let us be so ravished, seeing that our Lord Jesus Christ has so bountifully given us all that was requisite for our salvation, I say let us be so ravished with it, as all things else that can be laid before us, may be but as smoke to us, and we utterly despise and abhor them, to show how well we have profitted in the Gospel, and therewithal be so constant and steadfast in ourselves, as never to be thrust out of the way, whatsoever the devil whisper in our ear. (p. 329)
SERMON 16:
They that are loath to suffer themselves to be taught and would drive away all the ministers of God’s word if they could, and they which through envy and spitefulness could find in their hearts to abolish the remembrance of all those whom God has established to maintain the welfare of his people, they (say I) do show well enough, that they would have God to hold himself afar off from them, and that they be loath to come to him. (p. 343-344)
Such as go about to purchase favour at God’s hand by their own deservings are puffed up with pride and that their presumptuousness shuts the gate of Paradise against them, and that God vouchsafes not to hear them, because they defraud him of his due honour, and would happily as it were deck themselves with his feathers, and that they be traitors in robbing him of his righteousness: forasmuch as Saint Paul handles that point: there is now no doubt but he takes all those to be of the faith, which distrust themselves, and our utterly out of hope in themselves, and yet notwithstanding do return unto Jesus Christ, resting, leaning and trusting wholly unto him. (p. 347)
In very deed the Papists know nothing at all of what is told us here by Saint Paul: but (which is worse) they have their freewill, their merit, and their satisfactions: instead of God’s service, which they thrust under foot and falsify, they have gewgaws yea and abominations of the Devil’s own forging: and therefore they be sufficiently convicted to have no Christianity in them. (p. 348)
We may much better judge what is it is to be justified by faith: namely that is not a confused opinion of believing that there is a God, but a holding of him for our Father and Saviour, and that because he shows himself to be so by his word, and also gives us a good pledge and earnest penny of it in our Lord Jesus Christ, insomuch that there he shows himself to be joined and united with us, and that although we be wretched creatures and have nothing in us but all mischief, yet he fails not to take us for his own, and to admit us into his favour: the reason whereof is, because our Lord Jesus Christ is the means betwixt him and us. Therefore when we have that promise, and rest wholly upon it, and doubt not but that God does and will show himself gracious unto us unto the end, and therewithal call upon him and resort only unto him, giving over this world, and contnuing in the hope of the heavenly life, then we are sure that we have faith, and are justified: Abraham’s believing: and without that, let us assure ourselves there is no Christianity at all in us. (p350-351)
All that ever is termed faith in Popery, is but stark dotage. And why so? For there God’s word is hidden: and the greatest brutishness that can be, is taken for greatest devotion. (p. 351)
SERMON 17:
To be justified is not to have any righteousness in a man’s self, but to be admitted for righteous at God’s hand though we be not so. (p. 358)
All such as have any vain trust in their own merits are rank traitors to God and make war against him. (p. 368)
SERMON 18:
It is certain that such as think to make God indebted unto them, by bringing any virtue of their own unto him, do wipe and raze themselves quit and clean out of the register of righteousness. (p. 393)
SERMON 19:
Our Lord Jesus Christ was not hanged upon a tree in vain: for he was pleased to bear the cursedness of all such as were to be called unto salvation. (p. 398)
Our whole life is loathsome before God, and there is no way for us to come to atonement with him, till our Lord Jesus Christ take upon him the cursedness that is in us, and bear it in his own person. (p. 402)
SERMON 20:
If we come not to Jesus Christ to be gathered unto him: surely God disclaims us, and tells us that we be none of his, and that he will have none acquaintance at all with us. (p. 426)
True it is that the Sun shines as well as upon the faithless as upon the faithful, and all men are nourished alike with the things that God gives and grants unto them: but yet howsoever they fare, the unbelievers possess nothing by just title. They are but thieves, and must yield account of the benefits and goods which they have received of God, even to the last drop of water, because they were not sanctified, but defiled them as much as in them lay, because they had no faith. (p. 431)
All they which think to have anything by their own power must needs be bewitched by the devil. You see then how it is too gross a mockery when we think to deserve anything at God’s hand. (p. 436)
SERMON 21:
We are so given to self-soothing, that every one of us welters and sleeps in his own filth, insomuch that till the law touch us to the quick, our consciences are as it were benumbed, and to be short every man dispenses with himself and takes leave to do evil. But when the Law steps forth, then is sin known, and every man spite of his teeth, must be obliged to stoop before God, or gnash his teeth at him as a rebel. (p. 441)
SERMON 22:
The ancient fathers then were not little children after such a sort that they were not marked with God’s Holy Spirit, nor called by him to the inheritance of the endless life: but only in the measure of faith, which was the difference between them and us. And how was that? Even because the law which they had was yet wrapped in figures and shadows: whereas now Jesus Christ leads us right forth to heaven. And whereas I said that they were inferior to us in the measure of faith: I mean not that Abraham, David, and other like had a weaker faith than we: for seek we never so narrowly through the whole world, it is not to be presumed that any one creature is to be found at this day, which has the hundredth part of the faith of Abraham or David. (p. 472-473)
SERMON 23:
We shall never conceive the fruit that is contained in this text except we always bear in mind that by this word Faith Saint Paul means to exclude all the desert and worthiness that men suppose or imagine themselves able to bring with them unto God. When they will needs go through the matter with their own power and virtues: it is all one as if they would cut off a piece of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he cannot be rent in pieces or divided. Therefore all the working of our salvation must come of him alone, and we must not skulk here and there, nor seek byways, but come right forth unto him by the straight way of faith. (p. 482)
Baptism then makes us not all Christians, and then we know that to be made the child of God is too great a benefit to be fathered upon a corruptible element. What is the water? To say that the water begets or regenerates us again and that thereby we be delivered from death and obtain the glory wherein God lifts us up to himself is (say I) a perverting of all order. (p. 484-485)
If hypocrites boast of their baptism, Saint Paul shows them that it is but vanity and illusion, saying that the circumcision of the letter is nothing, that is to say, if we look no further but to the outward and visible Sacrament, it is all of no value. Even so it is with baptism: it shall stand them in no stead which with their mouths vaunt themselves to be Christians and great pillars of the Church, forasmuch as they defile the thing which God had dedicated to so excellent a use, as I have told you before. (p. 485)
SERMON 24:
From all time out of mind there has not been any other means to renew men to salvation and to bring them into God’s favour and love than by trusting in Jesus Christ and by fleeing altogether unto him for refuge. (p. 503-504)
There is none of us all but he ought to confess himself to be much rawer and weaker in faith than were the Prophets and Patriarchs and that their lives do show full well. (p. 505)
Look how many Ceremonies there are in the Popedom termed by the name of God’s service: so many be their idolatries and the illusions of Satan: and to be short all is abominable before God. Why so? For they imagine them to be things necessary for salvation that by the means of them they be able to ransom themselves and to get forgiveness of their sins. Moreover they deface our Lord Jesus Christ and the grace that is brought us by him, because they hope to ransom themselves by their own satisfactions, and by that means usurp and pluck to themselves the thing that belongs to the Son of God. Thus you see that they be cursed villains. (p. 508)
It is true that every man ought to humble himself when he knows his own infirmity: but yet it does not therefore follow that we should bring up new fashions after our own fancies. We must be contented with that which God has ordained. And young child must not choose his tutor of his own head: no, he should not be suffered to do so. But his father will appoint him one. (p. 509) The very cause why men’s wits have been so ticklish to devise store of Ceremonies in the Christian Church was that they saw so much rudeness among the common people. Yea marie, (say they) it is good reason that there should be this and that. Baptism were to simple a thing if there were nothing else to be seen in it but water, and that water would not be sufficient. For there are a great number of lay folk which are so dull that they understand not what that mystery means, that is to wit that we be renewed by our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore there needs to be oil and cream to represent the Holy Ghost, as it were in an invisible figure. Besides this there needs to be light and a white Chrisom [robe] and salt, and again one thing and again another. Very well: thus was baptism daily decked, yea in the opinion of men: but all of them are but defilings: for did not our Lord Jesus Christ who is the incomprehensible wisdom of God his Father know well enough what should be for our profit? Shall men come creeping like little toads and seek I wot not what, and bear themselves in hand that the things which our Lord Jesus Christ has ordained are imperfect, and that they will take in hand to make them perfect? As much is to be said of all the rest. Specially the Supper of our Lord Jesus Christ has not only been corrupted and maimed, but also utterly defaced by the devilish abomination of the hellish mass. (p. 509-510)
Let us follow the government which God has set down in his church, and assure ourselves that God will supply all our wants. How rude or raw soever we be, he can well skill to draw us to him. (p. 511)
The fathers of old time had many figures and shadows because our Lord Jesus Christ was not yet revealed. But now that he shines upon us and shows himself as the Day-Sun of Righteousness so brightly unto us: were it not a willful burying of him again if we would needs have figures still? (p. 513)
All they which busy themselves about such gewgaws do instead of seeking Christ throw themselves headlong into damnation by following so their own brain. (p. 513)
I tell you plainly, whensoever men say, we must have this, and we must have that, or we must have our Church or religion of this fashion or that fashion: it is as much as if he should say: God was not well advised how we should be governed, he wist not what was meet for us. (p. 514)
We ought so much the more to abhor these Devils, that bear us in hand and strain themselves to prove that the fathers of old time were like brute beasts, as though they had known nothing of the spiritual life. Behold a blasphemy mete to deface all the religion of the world. Of which number was that creature that was punished here according to his deserts, I mean that dog which dared be so bold to write, that Abraham never tasted nor knew of the heavenly life, nor never worshipped God but imaginatively, and that the reporting of him to be the father of the faithful is but a mockery, and that his faith was but a shadow of faith, and finally that he never knew of Jesus Christ, nor of his coming. Behold, (I pray you) the blasphemies wherewith his books were stuffed. But let us in these days abhor such plagues of Satan. (p.516)
SERMON 25:
If we should be lawless under pretence that our Lord Jesus Christ reigns over us and has set us at liberty, what a thing were it? There would be greater confusion in the Church, than there is where Satan has made a mingle-mangle and put all things out of order, so as there is no bridle at all. (p. 523)
Every man’s praying unto God ought to be with understanding. For if a man that understands no more than his own mother tongue should pray unto God in Greek or Hebrew, surely it were but a dalliance and an utter perverting and marring of the rule of praying aright, and there could be nothing but hypocrisy and feigned devotion in it. (p. 536)
SERMON 26:
When men will needs add I wot not what of their own brain to God’s truth it mars all. For let a man put a little vinegar or some other flavour sauce into a cup of the best wine in the world, and he were better to drink sheer water. (p. 548)
We be not only as straying beasts, but also as wild and wood beasts: we be wholly given to rebellion till God have tamed us, and changed us that we might be sheep of his fold, that he may do the office of Shepherd towards us. (p. 549)
When we be come to the knowledge of the Gospel we must not imagine ourselves to be better than other men, but that God preceded us, and that we should rather have perished a hundred times in our beastliness than have come to any good amendment, if God had not utterly changed us. Now then we see what freewill is able to do whereof ignorant wretches boast themselves to the defacing of God’s grace. (p. 549-550)
If I think myself to have aught at all in men why I should be preferred before one man or other: it is a taking away of God’s praise, and an usurping of it to myself: and that were an intolerable traitorousness. (p. 550)
Let us be held in awe and humility, seeing that the wellspring and beginning of our welfare is that God knew us and marked us out at such time as we cared not for him, but besides our ignorance, did also despise him, and were so brutish, that every of us had sought his own ruin and destruction, if he of his own infinite goodness had not held us back. (p. 551-552)
When a man sees good meat ready for his meal, and knows that he may take good sustenance of it, and yet will go his way from the table, and seek dung and filth to feed on, is he not worthy to be poisoned? Even so is it with all such as are not contented with the pure doctrine of God’s Law and Gospel. (p. 552)
The Turks and Jews do yet still at this day, who by their often washing of themselves both even and morn, and by their other ceremonies, confess themselves to be defiled, and have need to be cleansed by some others, and yet do renounce our Lord Jesus Christ who is the very cleanness whereby we must be made clean, according also as in very deed it is he that has wiped away all our spots. Seeing it is so then, all they that keep any Ceremonies in hope to get any favour at God’s hand by them, do not only beguile and martyr themselves in vain without any profit: but also do certainly provoke God’s wrath full more and more. Now we on our side are taught that our Lord Jesus Christ has shed his blood to wash our souls withal. Then if we seek any other cleansing or purgatory besides, surely it is an intolerable treachery. (p. 555)
SERMON 27
If we find ourselves to have transgressed God’s Law, and that our conscience upbraids us: there is none other remedy for us but to put ourselves into the hands of our Lord Jesus Christ, that we may be quit before God, and washed from all our spots by the merit of his death and passion, and by the shedding of his blood. (p. 562-563)
The better that a man knows himself, the more will he bethink him of the vices that are in him, which have need to be borne withal, and therefore that he must also bear with others. (p. 570)
It were much better that we were drowned a hundred times, than that ever we should go up into the pulpit, if we should not utter God’s will faithfully, and stick to that which he commands us, and draw it out of the clear fountain of his holy word. Should not these things be declared? Think we that God can be bereft of the thing that is peculiar to him, that is to wit of his truth? No: he and his truth can never be separated. (p. 580)
SERMON 28:
Seeing that all our lusts, our sinful vanities, and our froward affections are as bars, gates, and such other things cast in the way, to the intent that God’s word should not pass: let us fight against them, let it not only enter in unto us as at a crevice, but let it find the gate wide open, and whensoever God speaks, let us give good ear and open our hearts and minds, to receive the doctrine rightly and roundly, whereby we should be cleansed, till we be come to the fountain of all cleanness. (p. 601-602)
SERMON 29:
Behold all the holiness of Rome is this, that the Gospel was persecuted there, and that that devilish Dungeon had been defiled with the blood of the martyrs, as it were to provoke God’s wrath, and to confederate itself to fight against the truth, and as much as may be to abolish the name and remembrance of our Lord Jesus Christ. Behold here all the worthiness of Rome. (p. 614) We see that nowadays the pure doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ is not only shaken off, trodden under foot, despised, and scorned at Rome: but also cruelly persecuted with fire and sword, and finally there is no religion at all there. For that place is so full of filth and lewdness, that if a man go thither, it is a wonder that ever he should return with any fear of God or with any good seed in him. We see then that it is as a dungeon of hell: and would God that they which have been there had rather broken their necks than lifted up a foot to go thither. (p. 615)
Whereabouts is our greatest strife nowadays but for freewill, for merits, for satisfactions, and for such other things? The Papists say that we are able by our own freewill to purchase grace at God’s hand, not that we need not to be aided and succoured by his Holy Spirit, but because there is a certain matching together (say they) between God and us, so as God works one piece and we another. (p. 618)
SERMON 30:
What else are all the Churches of the Papists than brothel houses of Satan? All things are infected, nothing is there but filthiness, God’s service is there utterly marred, and to be short there is no soundness at all in them. The Papists therefore for all that ever they can pretend to make themselves God’s Church are but misbegotten Bastards, as they that are tied to the brothel house with their mother that Synagogue of Hell. (p. 630)
Thus you see that the thing wherein we differ from the bastard children which boast themselves falsely of God’s name, is that whereas they be puffed up with self-liking, and delight in their hypocrisy, and are always prating of their freewill, of their meritorious works, of their satisfactions, and of their virtues as well cardinal as theological as they term them, and (to be short) have nothing in them but pride: we on our side stick to the promise, that is to wit, that God having looked upon us with mercy, has drawn us out of the dungeon of destruction wherein we were, and by his Gospel told us, and assured us that he will be our Father, and that an heritage tarries for us, which is purchased for us, not by ourselves, nor by any mortal creature, but by Jesus Christ, who being very God became man, to the intent we might obtain the thing in him which is not to be found in all the world. (p. 632)
SERMON 31: They which seek their righteousness in their own virtues do alienate themselves from our Lord Jesus Christ, and from his grace. (p. 642)
The devilish opinion which reigns in Popery is that we must earn grace by our own deserts, and also that we must pacify God’s wrath and wipe out the remembrance of our sins and offences by making amends. (p. 651)
They then against whom Paul disputes said, We must keep still circumcision, we must needs be circumcised still. And to what purpose? To the end we may discharge ourselves towards God and be accepted as his hand for doing our duty. Whereto then shall Jesus Christ serve? He shall serve for to fill up a void room: for he is not utterly unprofitable: but when men have so discharged and cleared themselves, then if there be any want, Jesus Christ shall supply that. After that manner did those deceivers speak, which were Saint Paul’s adversary party. (p. 652)
If we say that we win God’s favour by our own deserts, and that Jesus Christ is but a supplier of wants: is it not a rending of him in pieces, and a dismembering of him as much as in us lies? (p. 653)
The Papists (as shameless as they be) do know well enough (as I said) that it is too manifest a thing, that men are not able to keep all the Law: they say, we maintain not that we be fully righteous in all points, but we say that Jesus Christ is partly our righteousness and redeemer, and that we ourselves do partly deserve well by our own works. (p. 657)
Jesus Christ shall not profit any of those which are circumcised. For why? If they seek the hope of their salvation in their own works, they must discharge themselves thoroughly and wholly towards God, and not pelt him out with gobbets and morsels as they say, but fulfill the whole Law without missing any one jot of it. And who is able to bring that to pass? (p. 659)
All such as keep the Pope’s ordinances do overthrow the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ. Not that a man is damned for not eating flesh upon Fridays, or in Lent time: but if he forbear the eating of flesh for superstition’s sake, and think to merit by so doing: it is certain that he renounces our Lord Jesus Christ. (p. 660)
SERMON 32:
The most part of men wander in their own windlasses [snares, decoys] and instead of coming unto God, do go from him, as it is to be seen in the Papacy, where wretched hypocrites and the ignorant sort say that their gadding after their Saints and puppets, and their marrying of themselves in their foolish devotions, is to get God’s favour. But in the meanwhile Jesus Christ is let alone, and no man makes account of him, but they rather hie them to some stock or stone which they call their Lady, than to the Son of God. And whereof comes this? Even because they know not how God has given us his grace, nor after what manner he will have us to seek it, nor what way or order it behooves us to hold. (p. 667)
To be short, let us mark that all that ever belongs to our salvation is so put into the person of God’s only Son: that he alone must suffice us, and we go straight unto him, and take all our contentment there. And as I said afore, let us keep ourselves from this imagination of thinking to purchase anything by our deserts, for it separates us utterly from our Lord Jesus Christ. (p. 667)
The faithful of all ages have ever sought their whole righteousness in the grace of God. Nevertheless they were helped by the Ceremonies and shadows, because the Gospel was not yet so revealed unto them as it is unto us, neither was Jesus Christ (who is the very pledge of righteousness) made yet so manifest. (p. 668)
If a man preach God’s mere mercy in Jesus Christ: by and by some Mastiff curs or other fall to barking, and cast forth store of slanders, as is to be seen yet still at this day. For if we condemn the Devilish self-trust wherewith men beguile themselves, in weening [thinking] to obtain salvation by their own deserts: O how so, say they? That were a condemning of all good works. And after that manner do the hypocrites nowadays slander the doctrine of the Gospel which we bear abroad, as though we meant to give leave and licence to do evil, that there might be no more difference between vice and virtue. Again if we tell them that their ceremonies are but pelting baggage, and that the more they take pride in them, the more abominable they be before God: O, how should that be, say they? Behold, these fellows would abolish all religion: and what a thing were that? Shall God be no more served and honoured? Such is the speech and talk that is used nowadays by those cur dogs, which cannot abide that our Lord Jesus Christ should be the only foundation whereon to settle the trust of our salvation, nor also abide that we should be governed by the pure and sole word of God. (p. 673)
Look upon Baptism, look upon the Lord’s Supper, which were instituted to the end that we should come and protest before God that we hold all things of him. What is there in Baptism? It is showed us there, that we must die in ourselves. And why so? Even because there is nothing but frowardness and cursedness in us, so as we be the children of wrath, and utter strangers unto God. Ye see then in Baptism a man is utterly rid of all his trust in himself. In the Supper we come to seek our life in Jesus Christ: and so we are stark dead both the ways. Yet for all this, the Papists ween [think] these things to be meritorious works. (p. 675)
SERMON 33:
We have seen how the rebukes that he [Paul] did set down hitherto heretofore were rough and sharp. Now when men exceed measure it is always dangerous for discouraging of men and for casting them into a melancholy. For this cause Saint Paul moderates himself, and seeks still to be one again with the Galatians. And in good sooth, that is the order which all men ought to keep, that are desirous to build up God’s Church. (p. 698)
If our sores be rubbed, although it grieve us and sting us to be sharply rebuked: yet we must not cease to abide it patiently, because God means not to throw us headlong into the bottomless pit, but rather calls us home to himself. (p. 699)
It behooves us so much the more to mark well how it is said here, that such as trouble the church shall bear their own judgment. For thereby Saint Paul does us to understand, that there are many despisers of God, which make no conscience to pervert all things: so they may win themselves estimation with the world, and purchase themselves credit, all is one with them, for they pass for nothing but to exalt themselves. Such manner of men do trouble the church a thousand ways. There are other who through vain glory and to seem skillful and sharpwitted, forge new doctrines. That is one other kind of Cozeners [deceivers]. And there are othersome so malicious and spiteful, as they cannot brook any peace and concord, according as it is said that the hand of Ishmael should be against all men, and all men’s hands against him. Then there are a sort that seek nothing but dissention and variance. Seeing then that we perceive that the Devil has so many bolsterers to turn us from the right way: had not every of us need to look well to himself, lest he be shaken down: and to continue always steadfast in the thing which we know to be of our God, whatsoever this man or that man do babble or prate? (p .700)
Although men were exalted to the third heaven, yet ought we to take them for stark devils, if they go about to mingle aught at all of their own devising, with the pure simplicity of God’s word. (p. 702)
God must yet notwithstanding govern still by his word, and his service must be ruled thereby, that our faith may be wholly conformable thereunto: and although all the world should set itself against it, and heap up never so huge and high mountains of most excellent titles even up to the clouds, all must be held but as smoke, yea and as filth and dung. (p. 702)
Forasmuch then as we see that God pours out his indignation upon them that have troubled his Church: let us have a zeal answerable thereunto, and let us abhor all false doctrines. (p. 703)
SERMON 34:
All they then which cannot abide to have the filthy dregs and corruptions of Popery cut off to the quick, do certainly aim at none other mark, than to eschew persecution, and to shrink away from it (p. 712)
It is certain therefore that such folk as desire to make truce with those that fight openly against our Lord Jesus Christ are full of treason. (p. 712)
As for the worldlings and such as are swollen in pride and overweening like toads, let them despise the Gospel as much as they list, and let them perish in their own cursedness: and in the meanwhile let us with all humbleness of faith embrace the Son of God. (p. 716)
When men make war against God, we must become such deadly enemies unto them, as we must utterly put out of mind all kindred and friendship, and all that else is: for otherwise we do not do our duty in any wise unto our God. (p. 720)
SERMON 35:
If men were not given to self-love as they be, there would be good love and agreement among men, but forasmuch as we be so much given to love ourselves, and the excess of that affection blinds us in such wise, that is bereaves us of all reason, equity and uprightness: therefore God says that we must love our neighbours as ourselves. (p. 732)
Under this word flesh men are taught their own frailty, and done to understand that they be but earth and dust, worms and worms’ meat. And this serves first of all to humble them. But when flesh is matched against Spirit, then are men not taken in their first state as they were created of God: but it serves to show that they be corrupted and full of infection and wickedness, so as there is no taste at all in them to discern aright, but they are utterly perverted in all their lusts. (p. 737)
To be short, look whatsoever God puts into his chosen and faithful ones to correct their wicked and sinful nature: the same is comprehended under the word Spirit. (p. 738)
And now again Saint Paul says, that the faithful do not what they would, and that is to give them courage still, that we may learn to go on forward, though we cannot bring all the things to pass thoroughly and perfectly which God shows unto us. And that is needful as I said: for else we should be hypocrites, and bear ourselves in hand that nothing were amiss. But such pride were intolerable: of which sort we see some mastiff dogs, in whom there is neither fear of God nor religion, and yet they preach that the faithful ought to be perfect. And that is a devilish blasphemy, and such a one as we ought to abhor. (p. 749)
SERMON 36:
Many Infidels which have not natural reason to govern themselves withal, are notwithstanding chaste and shamefaced, they spoil not other men of their goods, they be sober and honest, and to be short, they have many virtues after the opinion of the world. And why then are they condemned as whorehunters, thieves, and drunkards? It is because they have not those virtues in obedience unto God, neither is there any soundness in their heart: but they be restrained with fear of shame, or held in the way by some other means unknown to us. But yet does God by that means spare mankind, to the end that things should not go to havoc, nor men become altogether brute beasts. God then does so rule the unbelievers, as that their virtues (howsoever the world go) cease not to be sinful still. (p. 765-766)
We can be neither chaste, nor kindhearted, nor gentle, nor modest, nor sober: unless we be quit and clean plucked from our own nature, by forsaking both the world and ourselves. But that passes all our ability. (p. 767)
In these days in Popery, if a man speak of their holiness and their serving of God, it is nothing else but a making of mops and mows, and a sort of Ceremonies, that is to say a deal of pelting trash. When a Papist mumbles up his matins, when he hails or greets a puppet, when he gads from altar to altar, when these hypocrites have lighted up their candles, when they have sprinkled themselves well with holy water, when they have well crossed and recrossed themselves, both before and behind, when they have fasted Lent well, and to be short when they have overlaboured themselves to redeem themselves either by Masses or by other abominations: that is their serving and honouring of God. Besides this, if there be a fair Lamp in the Church, if the Organs pipe merrily, if there be store of gay copes and vestments, if the puppets be well gilded, if men perfume them thoroughly and seek their favour with many other such dotages: that is all the perfection of the Papists. And yet is it but stark leasing, yea and very gewgaws, or rather utter abominations, how great virtues soever they esteem them to be. But we on our side say that God’s service is spiritual and that he regards not the things that are seen of men, but requires a right uncorruptness and soundness of heart, according as it is said in the fifth of Jeremiah. (p. 768-769)
If we weary ourselves never so much in our own inventions: we cannot say that God accepts any whit of it: for we continue still in our own nature, which is froward. (p. 769)
Let us first cleanse ourselves from the filthiness that lies festering within our hearts: and afterward apply our whole endeavour to the other. Not that we can do it of ourselves: but let us be diligent in praying unto God, let every of us stir up himself early or late, morning and evening, and upon knowledge of our vices, let us be moved to sorriness, and seek succour from whence it ought to come: that is to wit at God’s hand who must remedy the sore that he has made. (p. 770)
SERMON 37:
If there be any one drop of goodness in us, the same is not of our own growing, neither can we challenge the praise of it, without doing wrong and injury to God. For they be all the fruits of his grace, and he is pleased to put them into us by his holy Spirit. (p. 776)
We say flatly that all that is ever termed by the name of merit or desert is stark abomination before God. Forasmuch as they bear themselves in hand that they be their own Saviours. You see then that all loftiness of man is pulled down by our doctrine. But yet that does not import that every man should take leave to do lewdly, and have no more care of serving God, nor of standing in awe of him. (p. 781)
Such as talk of Christian liberty should show indeed that they have crucified all their lusts and concupiscences to the intent to prove themselves the true members of our Lord Jesus Christ. (p. 783)
Let us mark well that we [preachers] shall never be good disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ except all vaingloriousness be beaten down in you. For ambition or vainglory, that is to say, the fond desire to be exalted among men, is above all other the deadliest plague that can be among such as have the charge of teaching. For they cannot but give over themselves to all evil, when they be tossed with the wind, seeking nothing else but to purchase some fame or renown among men, and to be well liked of. (p. 789)
SERMON 38:
In saying that we must endeavour to amend him again that is fallen: he shows us the gentleness which many men use in flattering such as have done amiss favours nothing at all of Christianity. Therefore men’s vices must be rebuked, and we must labour to bring back the party into the right way, which is strayed out of it. For if a man uphold him in his naughtiness, and encourage him in it, he betrays him, because he rocks him asleep, and by that means sinks him the deeper into destruction. (p. 798)
No man can abide to his galled back rubbed, neither do any men take warnings in good worth, saving they whom God has touched, and to whom he has given the spirit of obedience to yield themselves teachable. (p. 799)
When we see any man do amiss, let us learn that it is no love nor charity to cloak his evil doings, so as we should dissemble them and make no countenance at all of them: but that if we have a care of him that is so fallen, we must turn him away. (p. 800)
If we desire to be held and avowed for God’s children let us have an eye to the nature of him which calls us to the likeness of his own image which is that we be mild and gentle. Now God in his gentleness does not flatter such as have done amiss. For he hates iniquity and must needs always show himself an enemy to it. But we see the thing that is said, namely that God does in such wise correct his children, that the chastisements that he uses begin at his own house and at his own household folk. Yet for all that, he does not thunder against poor sinners, but waits for them patiently, encouraging them, drawing with them, bearing with them, setting his grace before them, and showing them that he is ready to receive them, and has his arms stretched out to embrace them if they will come unto him. (p. 803-804)
And hereupon we may also gather that such as nowadays would have vices cloaked, yea and borne out under the pretence that God is patient and gentle, do falsely corrupt the holy Scripture. (p. 804)
Our Lord Jesus Christ calls not all men without exception unto him, but gives a mark to such as may have access to obtain favour, namely that they be overladen: that is to say, they welter not in their sins, nor take pleasure in them, neither do they boast of them as folk past shame: but they would of obligation have ease, and can find none in themselves. Therefore he says he is ready to deal gently with them. (p. 812-813)
SERMON 39:
Every man shuts his eyes when he should think upon his own sins. Of a truth there cannot be so much as one drop of virtue in us, but by and by we magnify it: but if our vices be apparent to the whole world, insomuch that even little children can laugh us to scorn: yet cannot we ourselves see them. (p. 818)
When humility or lowliness is talked of in common speech, it is taken to be but a device. For every man can well enough say by his honesty, that he is nothing: but in the meanwhile they cease not to swell like Toads with the poison of pride. (p. 819)
Whereas to our seeming we have a will whereby we choose both good and evil: the same will is a bondslave to sin, so as we do nothing else but fight against God. (p. 820)
In good sooth we see the great contentions that there are nowadays about Freewill and men’s own virtue, as though men were able to advance themselves, and to take the grace of God, and by that means to deserve well. But all this proceeds of this, that men are fore possessed with such devilish pride and they will ever more needs be somewhat of themselves. (p. 822)
Certainly we cannot profit at all in God’s school, nor in the Holy Scripture, till we have known that we be nothing at all, to the end we may come to draw out of the fullness of our Lord Jesus Christ. (p. 822)
SERMON 40:
We must not take any nowadays for Ministers and Herdsmen of God’s Church but such as bring his word. (p. 842)
Let us learn to discern God’s true Church from all the Synagogues that Satan has built in the world, and wherewith he dazzles our eyes nowadays. That is to wit, when God’s word is preached faithfully let us conclude that God also does both know and acknowledge the flock that is assembled there. (p. 843)
SERMON 41:
They that are niggardly and pinching, and shrink away when they should do good, do not only despise God, and reject his word: but also are ugly monsters, because they consider not that there ought to be a community among all men. (p. 872)
God our Sovereign Lord looks down upon us that are but wretched worms of the earth and filthiness: yea and he not only vouchsafes to say, I know you: but also protests, I have adopted you as my children, you are my workmanship, you are my heirs, you are after a sort my members. God vouchsafes to speak after that fashion: and we be so full of pride and stateliness, that we despise such as are as good as ourselves, and most commonly much better. So then who can bear with such pride? To be short, they that are so strange in withdrawing themselves from their brethren, and will not in any wise communicate with them, deserve well to be wiped out of the book of life, so as God should raze and scrape them quite out, and deliver them into the possession of the devil who is their sire, for he was a murderer and full of cruelty from the beginning. (p. 876-877)
True it is that there are not past six or seven leaves in this Epistle, and at the first it should not seem so great a letter. But if we mark the substance and contents of it, surely we shall find here wherewith to confound the Devil, and all the wiles that he can bring with him, so as God’s truth (which is our salvation) shall have the upper hand. Insomuch that if we had no more but this Epistle, we might be sufficiently fenced and armed, to fight against all the lies, deceits and abuses which the Devil can allege to blear our eyes with. (p. 878)
SERMON 42:
God had commanded the Jews to be circumcised. And why? To the end they might see that all mankind is accursed, and that there is nothing but uncleanness in us, and that we must be obliged to renounce all that is of our own nature, or else we shall never cease to be filthy and damnable before God. Lo what the Jews ought to have learned by their circumcision. (p. 897)
SERMON 43:
You shall scarce find one of them in an hundred, which will not grant that there are abuses in Popery: but yet [they will say] that all must not be cut off by the quick, but that it is enough if some of the overgross and excessive superstitions be taken away, and so they would happily still nourish a great source of infections. And why? For (as I have said) they would willingly be in credit and estimation, and it is no matter at all with them to betray the pureness of the Gospel, so they may save themselves from persecution. (p. 901)
All God’s service which is so termed in the popedom is but a maze and gulf of superstitions invented of their own heads. But let us consider what those things may avail. God has not made mention of any of them, but men have devised them of themselves, yea or rather Satan has whispered them into their ears, to trouble God’s service withal. And yet notwithstanding, the Papists imagine that there is neither religion, nor faith, nor service of God, nor zeal, except a man be ravished with their foolsbabbles. (p. 911-912)
God thinks it enough that we serve him with a pure conscience, and that having put our trust in him, knowing that we hold all things of him, and therewithal that we live uprightly and faithful, one with another, knowing that charity is the fulfilling of the law and the end of the law: and finally that we be so dedicated to our God, as we may live chastely and in all holiness, waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ as it is said in the epistle to Titus. That then is the first point of the holiness and perfection which God shows us by his word. But the Papists will on the contrary part say, how so? What shall become of so many goodly devotions? Shall they all be abolished? Nay it were better that God should be plucked out of heaven. Lo what the doltishness of the Papists is. (p. 912)
Although men should spit in our faces, and although there appear no such virtues in us as were requisite: yet notwithstanding, if we keep on our way still unto God, we shall ever find him pitiful to bear with our infirmities, and to relieve all our miseries. When we be once at the point, it ought to suffice us. But on the contrary part, let us understand also that in blessing such as frame themselves to the rule of God, the Holy Ghost curses and detests, yea and utterly shakes off such as run randomly after that sort, and set more by their own fancies than by all laws, and will needs have leave to do what they list, and harden themselves in such wise against God’s word. Although then that they be had in reputation to the worldward, and be in a manner drunken in their own pride and presumption, and set more by themselves that reason would they should: yet we see that God does always hold them as accursed. (p. 916).
