7. Seventh Sermon
Contents
Editorial Note
PRELIMINARY NOTICE
Title Page
1. FIRST SERMON
2. SECOND SERMON
3. THIRD SERMON
4. FOURTH SERMON
5. FIFTH SERMON
6. SIXTH SERMON
7. SEVENTH SERMON
Editorial Note
n our recent publication, Sermons on the Song of King Hezekiah, we
included an editorial notice from volume 35 of the Calvini Opera,
which included some background information on John Calvin's Isaiah
sermons. These sermons on Isaiah 52:12-53:12 are also included in the
same volume of Calvini Opera. Having used Claude to generate the
translation, we have entitled this edition The Prophecy of Christ's Death
and Passion: Sermons on Isaiah 53.
PRELIMINARY NOTICE
esides the four sermons on part of the thirty-eighth chapter of Isaiah
which have just been read, there exist seven others on the fifty-third
chapter of the same prophet. We do not know whether they were ever
published separately; however, we suppose that they were first published in
the volume we are about to describe, in which they appear following a good
many other sermons on various texts of the New Testament. What leads us
to this supposition is the very date of this volume, which is precisely that of
Calvin's preaching on the book of the prophet Isaiah, concerning which we
have recorded the necessary information in the foreword to the preceding
article.
We know of only four copies of the volume in question. We have taken a
copy from the one in the library of the Arsenal and collated it with the one
at Wolfenbüttel.
Here now is Badius's very interesting preface:
TO THE FAITHFUL SCATTERED IN SEVERAL LANDS,
CONRAD BADIUS WISHES GRACE AND BLESSING THROUGH
JESUS CHRIST OUR SAVIOUR.
We know what the pride of the sect of the Pharisees was like — how,
although they were full of darkness and ignorance, they nevertheless
boasted of being great expositors of the Law, going so far as to take their
very name from it, as if they held in their bosom the marrow and the secret
sense of Scripture. Yet instead of feeding the simple people with true and
sound doctrine, they trained them in I know not what foolish trifles and vain
ceremonies which they invented beyond the word of God. Our great
Sorbonne doctors do the same in our time, and all these ranting friars — of
whom some, though they reckon themselves the pillars of the Church,
companions of the Apostles, and the very workshop of the Holy Spirit
where all interpretation of Scripture and resolution of every point of
religion must be sought, nevertheless do nothing but tell vain and foolish
fables, or busy themselves with curious questions full of sophistry and a
thousand subtleties which serve no edification at all. Others preach, instead
of the word of God, the constitutions and ordinances which they themselves
have made to establish the tyranny of the Pope, the true Antichrist and
enemy of the truth. Others again foam at the mouth in the pulpit and belch
out arrogant words against the children of God and those to whom Jesus
Christ has revealed himself in these latter times, calling them Lutherans,
seditious men, and inventing a thousand lies against them — instead of
nourishing with the true pasture of the word of God their poor starving
sheep, who drink in such poisons in place of the spiritual food of their
souls.
Wherefore, my brothers, beloved in Jesus Christ, when God sends us
some good and faithful teacher who purely expounds the word of God to his
hearers, we ought to hold him in wonderful esteem; for there are very few
who faithfully discharge their office. And among others we ought to hold in
special regard those whom God has endowed with special graces and the
gift of interpretation — as today our faithful Pastor and good servant of
God, John Calvin, makes great profit of the precious talent he has received
from the Lord, as his preaching bears good witness (as all fair-minded
persons may judge), being in no way perfunctory or done by rote, but
carefully premeditated and well suited to the capacity of his sheep, always
keeping before his eyes the benefit of the Lord Jesus, so as to engrave it
vividly in their hearts. These are not commonplaces all chewed over
beforehand, nor sermons kept up his sleeve to be made to fit any passage of
Scripture, as a single last fits every foot; rather they are true, pure, plain
expositions proper to the text he has to expound. He does not stuff them
with exhortations beside the point; he does not fill them with invectives
proceeding from ambition. For although we have great need that the
superstitions of the Papacy be daily assailed by the word of God, so as to
efface them from our hearts — like a strong odour with which we have been
steeped since our infancy — yet if the passage is not directly against such
abuses, he will not depart from his exposition to cry out against them, as the
Papists at every turn and without occasion bark like mastiffs against the
Gospel renewed in these latter days in the world; but his custom is to follow
a thread and a continuous course tending toward edification, omitting
nothing that serves the honour of God and the instruction of his hearers.
Would to God there were many like him! The poor Church of Jesus Christ
would be greatly relieved by it; but I do not doubt that our own ingratitude
hinders God from sending more faithful Pastors than there are at present.
For if any are found who wish plainly to discharge their office and to cut
the word of God straight (as St. Paul commands), reproving vices and
opposing evil in order to maintain the honour of him by whom they are
sent, at once they are charged with rage, and men never cease to bark after
them and to slander them. Indeed, the very man of whom I speak, for his
sincerity and the great faithfulness he brings to the execution of his charge,
has acquired so many enemies that even those who never saw or heard him,
and never read two words of his works, wish him dead. But thanks be to
God, his good conscience and the witness he has before God and his
Angels, and of the faithful who hear him daily, that it is wrongfully he is
thus ill spoken of by men, give him courage to pursue steadfastly the work
of the Lord. He sees how his Master was treated, and after him the
Apostles; thus, it does him no harm to walk in their steps, knowing that God
is powerful to keep his deposit, and that those will be counted worthy of the
Kingdom of heaven who suffer for it.
Now, since not all can have their dwelling in this Church so as to partake
of the heavenly pasture which this good shepherd has for twenty years now
ceaselessly administered — and since it is expedient that those newly
coming to this charge should see his manner of teaching, in order to follow
it; likewise also that those who think he does nothing but speak evil and cry
out in the pulpit against the Pope and his people, and thunder against their
traditions, without otherwise expounding Scripture, or who think he does
nothing but induce people to a carnal liberty and to throw off the yoke of
Kings and Princes and all subjection, should read his sermons, so that they
may see how greatly wrong it is that such blame is laid upon him, and so as
to remove the bad opinion they have conceived of him — several good
persons have been of the mind to have some quantity of them printed, and
in particular Laurent de Normandie, whose zeal and holy conduct is well
enough known here, who for the past ten years has ceaselessly employed all
his effort and his means in having books printed for the edification of the
Church.
It is true (as I have already given to understand in the preface to the
sermons on the Decalogue) that this is neither by the will nor the consent of
the author — not that he wishes to hinder the good and the fruit the Church
may receive from it, but he would wish that his sermons should not extend
beyond his own flock, both because they are made specially for his sheep,
to whose capacity he accommodates himself as much as he can, and
because it seems to him that a different order and arrangement would be
required for them to be thus set before the eyes of all the world. But as for
reviewing them to polish them — quite apart from his not having the leisure
— he would never wish to occupy himself with that. For if he wished to put
out sermons, he well knows how to make entirely new homilies, better
worked out, without reworking something he has already delivered on the
spot. Nevertheless, seeing the great fruit that may come from such sermons
thus published, we have not feared to displease him and to disobey him
somewhat in this matter, in order to make you partakers of the excellent
riches which we enjoy in this little corner, hated and detested by the world
as pernicious and accursed, but precious nonetheless before God. It is true
that what has given us this boldness is the liberality of our magnificent and
much-honoured Lords, who, desiring the advancement of the Church of
God, have given us permission and privilege to print them.
Now, seeing that among so great a quantity of them as have been gathered
we had to make a choice, we thought it good to put forward some small
number, so that according as they are well received by you, more may be
produced. Here then is the order we have followed. In the first place we
have put a Congregation on the beginning of the Gospel according to St.
John, where the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ is amply treated. Now by
this word Congregation I mean a certain assembly of the Church held on
one of the days of the week, where each of the Ministers in his turn
expounds some passage of Scripture, more in the manner of a lesson than of
a sermon; and this done, if there is anyone among the others to whom the
Spirit of God has revealed something bearing on the understanding and
clarification of what has been set forth, he is free to speak. After that we
have added a sermon for Christmas Day concerning the Nativity of Jesus
Christ. Then we have added the sermons on his passion and death, on his
resurrection and ascension, on the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the
Apostles, and on the first address of St. Peter after having received the Holy
Spirit. Finally, we have added a sermon in which the last coming of Jesus
Christ is treated. After which, thinking to bring this book to a close, it
pleased God to let us hear the most excellent sermons that it is possible to
hear or recite, on the end of the fifty-second chapter of the Prophet Isaiah
and on the whole of the fifty-third, where the mystery of the death and
passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, and its causes, are so described and
depicted to the life, that it seems the Holy Spirit wished to set before our
eyes Jesus Christ condemned in our name and fastened to the cross for our
sins, so that, suffering the punishment that was due to us, and bearing for us
the wrath and judgment of God, he might deliver us from eternal death.
These sermons seemed to us so fitting to accompany those we have placed
here that we could not help joining them to these, so as not to deprive you
of so great a good.
For the rest, we have taken care to choose as much as we could the
sermons preached on the days when the Holy Supper of the Lord is
celebrated in this Church, both because they generally have somewhat
greater vehemence, and because the point of this Sacrament is always
clarified in them — a point over which there are today more contentions
and controversies in the world than over any other. And for this same reason
we have resolved to present to you next the Sermons this good Doctor has
made on the tenth and eleventh chapters of the First Epistle of St. Paul to
the Corinthians, where the true institution of the Supper is clearly shown,
and the corruption and abuse that have since arisen are vigorously refuted.
Furthermore, because the two Epistles of St. Paul to Timothy and the one to
Titus are, so to speak, the household management of the Church — that is,
containing the state and government of it, and how each person in particular
ought to conduct himself in his office — now that the Lord in his mercy is
spreading the rays of his Gospel light in many places, we hope to publish
the sermons that have been preached on these three Epistles. And also
because grace through Jesus Christ, and the setting at naught of the merit of
human works, are excellently treated in the Epistle to the Galatians, we
hope to present to you the sermons made on it — a thing as necessary in
this time as any other. And if we perceive that such gifts are pleasing to you,
we will spare no means that God gives us to make you partakers of several
others.
Meanwhile, my beloved brothers, pursue your course happily, and do not
be terrified by the threats and cruelties of tyrants, who think today to do
God service by persecuting Jesus Christ in his members. Set before
yourselves that incorruptible crown and everlasting joy which is prepared
for you if you persevere steadfastly and to the end in your holy calling,
knowing that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be
compared with the glory that shall be revealed — to which may we come
through Jesus Christ our Saviour. So be it.
***
There exists of this same collection another, somewhat more recent edition.
But we have not encountered any copy of it in the numerous public libraries
whose catalogues we have examined or concerning which we have been
furnished with information. We ourselves possess one — perhaps the only
one still in existence, or at least the only one we know of.
Title Page
SERMONS ON THE PROPHECY OF CHRIST, CONCERNING HIS
DEATH AND PASSION: TAKEN FROM ISAIAH