Hope and Manifold Consolation of the Faithful. The Third Sermon
I suALL not do amiss, I think, my reverend? brethren, if to the treatise which I have already made of earthly riches, and of the use and abuse of the same, I do here also add a discourse of the divers calamities, wherewith man, so long as he liveth in this frail flesh, is continually vexed and daily afflicted. For since that many men do either lose their temporal goods, or else can by no means get them, which are the causes why they be oppressed with penury and neediness; it cannot be but profitable and very necessary too for every good man to know out of the word of God the very reason
[1 Vol. τ. p. 188.) [2 quomodo potueris, ita esto misericors, Lat. and Vulgate. This]
[sentence, however, is omitted in the authorised Version, though re-]
[tained in the service of the Offertory in the Book of Common Prayer,]
[and given in Coverdale’s Bible, 1535.) [3 fratres honorandi, Lat.)]
and ground of his consolation in his miseries; lest, being swallowed up of too great sorrow, and entangled in utter despera~ tion, he give himself over to be Satan’s bond-slave. Now this treatise serveth for the whole life of man. For I mean not to speak of any one calamity alone, as of poverty, or penury, but generally of all the miseries that happen to man. Verily, since man is born to grief and misery, as birds to flying and fishes to swimming; his life can never possibly be either sweet quiet, unless he know the manner and reason of his calamity. And if so be he know the reason thereof, religiously taken and derived out of the word of God; then his life cannot choose but be sweet and quiet, howsoever otherwise it seem to be most bitter and intolerable. The mind of man, verily, is sorely afflicted and grievously tormented with lamentable miseries; but the same, on the other side, is sweetly eased and mightily upholden by the true knowledge of those miseries, and holy consolations, derived and taken out of the word of God.
First of all, it is requisite to lay before our eyes and reckon up the several kinds and especial sorts of mortal men’s calamities, The evils verily are innumerable, which daily fall upon our necks; but those which do most usually happen are the plague or pestilence, sundry and infinite diseases, death itself, and the fear of death, whose terror to some is far more grievous than death can be. To these be added the death and destruction of most notable men, or such of whom we make most account; robberies, oppressions, endless ill chances, poverty, beggary, lack of friends, infamy, banishment, persecution, imprisonment, enforced torments, and exquisite punishments of sundry sorts and terrible to think on, unseasonable and tempestuous weather, barrenness, dearth, frost, hail, deluges, earthquakes, the sinking of cities, the spoiling of fields, the burning of houses, the ruin of buildings, hatred, factions, privy grudges, treasons, rebellions, wars, slaughters, captivity, cruelty of enemies, and tyranny; also the lack of children; or troubles, cares, and hellish lives by the matching of unmeet mates in wedlock, by children naugh- [6 Job v. 7: homo nascitur ad laborem, et avis ad volatumVulgate. “Man is borne unto mysery, like as the byrde for to fle.”— Coverdale’s Bible, 1535.)
[5 miseriee, Lat. without any epithet. ]
[Bullinger, 11] 8
tily disposed, maliciously bent, disobedient and unthankful to father and mother; and lastly, care and continual grief in sundry sorts for sundry things, which never cease to vex our minds. For no man can in never so long a bead-row! reckon up all the evils whereunto miserable mankind is woefully endangered, and every moment tormented. New miseries rise up every day, of which our elders did never hear; and they are appointed to be felt and suffered of us, who with our new and never heard of sins do daily deserve new and never seen punishments, when as otherwise the miseries, which our forefathers felt, had been enough and sufficient to have plagued us all. ὁ But now with these evils, as well the good and godly with worshippers of God, as the wicked contemners of his name, are troubled and put in ure: yea, the saints are through all? their life time afflicted and vexed, when as contrarily the wicked abound with all kinds of joy and delightful pleasures: whereupon it cometh, that great temptations and complaints arise in the minds of the godly. The wicked do gather by their happy state and pleasant life, that God doth like their religion, and accept their manner of dealing, whereby they are confirmed and grounded in their errors. And on the other side the godly, by reason of the miseries which they have long suffered, do revolt from godliness, and turn to the ungodly, because they think that the state of the wicked is far better than theirs, Now it is good to know, and severally to learn, all this out of the scriptures. That the godly are and have been afflicted, as well as the wicked, since the beginning of the world, it is manifest to be seen in the example of Abel and Cain: for, as the one was pitifully slain of the other for his sincere worshipping of God, so was the other for the murder made a vagabond, not daring for fear to abide in any place to take his rest in. Jacob, surnamed Israel, is read to have been vexed with many calamities. The same is reported also of the Egyptians, while they persecuted the Israelites. Saul was vexed, and David afflicted. The Lord our Saviour, with his disciples, bare the cross of grief and trouble: again, on the other side, the Jews, who cruelly persecuted Christ and his disciples, were horribly destroyed,