Commentary on Harmony of the Law Volume 2 Complete John Calvin
JOHN CALVIN
is equivalent to bearing an injury in mind; as we also say in French: "garder une injure." 17
Leviticus 19:14
Leviticus 19
Leviticus 19:14
14. Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the Lord.
14. Surdo non maledices, et coram caeco non pones offendiculum, sed timebis a Deo tuo: ego Jehova.
Since the Law comprehends under the word murder, all the wrongs whereby men are unjustly injured, that cruelty was especially to be condemned by which those wretched persons are afflicted, whose calamity ought rather to conciliate our compassion. For, if any particle of humanity exists in us, when we meet a blind man we shall be solicitous lest he should stumble or fall, and, if he goes astray, we shall stretch out our hands to him and try to bring him back into the way; we shall also spare the deaf, for to insult them is no less absurd or barbarous than to assail stones with reproaches. It is, therefore, gross brutality to increase the ills of those whom our natural sense impels us to relieve, and who are already troubled more than enough. Let us, then, learn from these words, that the weaker people are, the more secure ought they to be from all oppression or injury, and that, when we attack the defenseless, the crime of cruelty is greatly aggravated, whilst any insult against the calamitous is altogether intolerable to God.
The Ceremonial Supplements of the Sixth Commandment
Fr., "Les Theologiens de la Papaute." C. refers elsewhere to this scholastic maxim: "Nor is the argument worth a straw, That the thing regulated must always be inferior to the rule. The Lord did not make self-love the rule, as if love towards others was subordinate to it; but whereas, through natural pravity, the feeling of love usually rests on ourselves, He shows that it ought to diffuse itself in another direction — that is, should be prepared to do good to our neighbor with no less alacrity, ardor, and solicitude, than to ourselves." — Inst., book 2, 8, Section 54. "Again, when Moses commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves, he did not intend to put the love of ourselves in the first place, so that a man may first love himself and then love his neighbors: as the sophists of the Sorbonne are wont to cavil, that the rule must always go before what it regulates." — Harm. of the Evangelists, (C. Society's Trans.,) vol. 3, p. 59.
Addition in Fr., "Et pourtant il faut suppleer ou injure ou rancune; and, therefore, injury or grudge must be supplied.