Calvini Opera Editorial Notice

CALVINI OPERA EDITORIAL NOTICE

e know from Colladon ( Life of Calvin, Volume XI, p. 81) that Calvin, for his regular weekly sermons, took up the prophet Isaiah,

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which he had preached some years earlier in the Church (we assume, at the Friday congregations) and had since lectured on in the school. These sermons had been collected by stenographers, and six volumes of them existed in the Geneva library, of which we have only been able to recover the second (chapters 13 to 29), containing 66 sermons preached from February 22 to July 31, 1557 (628 leaves), and the fourth (chapters 42 to 51), of 503 leaves, containing 56 sermons preached from December 31, 1557 to June 4, 1558. The third volume has been recovered at the Tronchin library in Bresinge [Bessinge], comprising 67 sermons on chapters 30 to 42, preached from August 4 to December 30, 1557. The series had further included: Volume I, 66 sermons begun July 16, 1557; Volume V, 44 sermons begun June 14, 1558; and Volume VI, 43 sermons begun September 22 of that same year — 343 sermons in total.

Of all these sermons, only four have ever been printed, on verses 9 to 22 of the thirty-eighth chapter, along with seven on chapter 53. Here we are speaking only of the former. Of the pamphlet containing them, only two copies remain, both in Paris — one at the Bibliothèque Nationale, the other at the Bibliothèque Mazarine, this latter bound together with other small volumes under the number 23607, which we have already had occasion to mention in connection with the sermons on Psalms 115 and 124.

It is a small octavo of 98 numbered pages; the gatherings are signed a–g; the first five and the last are regularly of 8 leaves, but the sixth (f) has only two leaves, without any of the text being missing. The very last leaf is blank. Here is the title:

Sermons of Jean Calvin on the Song that good King Hezekiah composed after he had been sick and afflicted by the hand of God, as it is contained in Isaiah, chapter 38. (The Estienne olive-tree device.) At Geneva, by François Estienne, for Emeran le Melais. 1562.

The text is preceded by the following notice:

JACQUES ROUX: TO THE FAITHFUL READER, GREETING Although in all the afflictions by which God tests his faithful, Satan takes the occasion and the material to shake them and turn them from the faith —as though such afflictions were the clearest and most evident testimony of their reprobation — his rage nonetheless shows itself far more inflamed when God, closely examining and summoning the conscience of his own, presents himself for a time as their adversary and stern judge, and makes them feel in earnest the dread of his judgments. Now such trials are very dangerous, for it seems, even to those who have made moderate progress in the word of God, in no way fitting that the faithful should be subject to such a trial — seeing that in their Head, our Lord Jesus Christ, the wrath of God has been appeased once for all, and that through him they are set free and delivered from the tyranny of the prince of this world. For this reason, following the counsel of the Holy Spirit, we must diligently gather from the holy Scriptures the examples of those who, though having good testimony of having been pleasing to God, nevertheless passed through such a furnace — so that, being thereby strengthened in patience, we may resist every such violent assault of Satan, and carry off the victory against his pernicious efforts.

Now among those of whom Scripture makes mention, the example of good King Hezekiah is excellent, as he himself sufficiently declares, in few words, in his Song, as the prophet Isaiah recorded it in writing. This Song, dear reader, so that you may profit from it all the better, I present to you together with its true exposition, faithfully gathered from the sermons of Jean Calvin, faithful minister of Jesus Christ, just as he preached it publicly, without anything having since been added to it or taken from it. I must confess, however, that I did not obtain his consent to have it brought to light without great difficulty — as all those who know him privately will readily believe, since they know well that he has wished only to serve the flock God has entrusted to him, teaching them in a familiar way, and not to compose Homilies at his leisure to be set before the eyes of the whole world. But I think it would be superfluous for me to dwell on making you understand with what skill and vehemence he has shown the true and natural sense of this Song, nor how profitable the reading of these sermons will be to you — being assured that the experience and certainty you will gain from reading them will teach you more than I could ever tell you. For my part, I know how I was carried away, hearing the living voice of this good servant of God, led and guided by the Holy Spirit, without deceit or any display of human eloquence, but pure and simple — and yet lively and penetrating, as God by his grace made me feel it in earnest, with an indescribable consolation, according to the great need I had of it, being at that time in a like struggle of spirit, and stirred by the goad of a similar trial, just as much as God saw fit for me.

Now although God examines his own so keenly, this is not to say that the inestimable benefit of our Lord Jesus Christ is in any way diminished or obscured by it, or that they should come to doubt their free adoption and the fatherly love of God — for on the contrary, by this very means his excellence and power are declared all the better, seeing that through it all the afflictions they endure are but so many steps leading them to the inheritance of heaven, which he has acquired for them at so dear a price. This, dear reader, is what I thought good to tell you, having procured for you so great a good as the enjoyment of these fine sermons, which would otherwise have remained within the enclosure of the sheepfold where they were delivered — asking you to take this good intention of mine in good part, and to pray with me to our good God and Father that he would soon confound Satan, and further advance and maintain the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ, which today is so outrageously persecuted by the sons of this age, enemies of the truth. So be it.

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We have not been able to bring ourselves to copy out the 164 sermons that still survive only in manuscript. Since Calvin's commentaries are practical rather than scholarly in character, publishing the sermons alongside the other work would have been redundant — not to mention that we know well enough, from the two different versions of the commentary on Isaiah, how inexact these stenographic transcriptions tend to be. We therefore confine ourselves here, as everywhere else, to re-editing what has already been published before, and that generally under the very eyes of the author himself.