John Calvin's Commentaries On The Harmony Of The Gospels Vol. 1

John Calvin, John King

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9783849620509
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Calvin produced commentaries on most of the books of the Bible. His commentaries cover the larger part of the Old Testament, and all of the new excepting Second and Third John and the Apocalypse. His commentaries and lectures stand in the front rank of Biblical interpretation.Our Author has exerted a powerful influence on all succeeding expositors. They have found their interest in listening to his instructions, and have been more deeply indebted to him than is generally known. Many valuable interpretations of passages of Scripture appeared for the first time in his writings, and have ever since been warmly approved. In other cases, the views which had been previously held are placed by him in so strong a light as to remove every doubt, and satisfy the most cautious inquiry. And yet the stores, from which so much has been drawn, are far from being exhausted, nor is their value greatly lowered by improvements which have been subsequently made. The department of History presents an analogous case. Documents which had been overlooked are carefully examined. Conflicting evidence is more accurately weighed. Important transactions assume a new aspect, or, at least, are altered in their subordinate details. Still, there are historians, in whose narrative the great lines of truth are so powerfully drawn, that the feebler, though more exact, delineations of other men cannot supply their place.In the chief moral requisite for such a work Calvin is excelled by none. He is an honest interpreter. No consideration would have induced him to wrest the words of Scripture from their plain meaning. Those who may question his conclusions cannot trace them to an unworthy motive. Timid theologians will be occasionally startled by his expositions.

Commentaries On The Harmony Of The Gospels Vol. 1

John Calvin

Contents:

John Calvin – A Biography

Commentaries On The Harmony Of The Gospels Vol. 1

The Translator’s Preface

The Epistle Dedicatory To The Old Translation

The Author’s Epistle Dedicatory

The Argument

Commentary On A Harmony Of The Evangelists

Luke 1:1-4

Luke 1:5-13

Luke 1:14-17

Luke 1:18-20

Luke 1:21-25

Luke 1:26-33

Luke 1:34-38

Luke 1:39-45

Luke 1:46-50

Luke 1:51-55

Luke 1:56-66

Luke 1:67-75

Luke 1:76-80

Matthew 1:1-17; Luke 3:23-38

Matthew 1:18-25

Luke 2:1-7

Luke 2:8-14

Luke 2:15-21

Matthew 2:1-6

Matthew 2:7-12

Luke 2:22-32

Luke 2:33-39

Matthew 2:13-18

Matthew 2:19-23

Luke 2:40-47

Luke 2:48-52

Matthew 3:1-6; Mark 1:1-6; Luke 3:1-6

Matthew 3:11-12; Mark 1:7-8; Luke 3:15-18

Matthew 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-23

Matthew 4:1-4; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-4

Matthew 4:5-11; Mark 1:13; Luke 4:5-13

Matthew 4:12, 17; Mark 1:14-15;

Luke 3:19-20; 4:14

Luke 4:16-22

Luke 4:23-30

Matthew 4:13-16

Matthew 4:18-25; Mark 1:16-20; Luke 5:1-11

Mark 1:21-28; Luke 4:31-36

Matthew 8:14-18; Mark 1:29-39; Luke 4:38-44

Matthew 5:1-12; Luke 6:20-26

Matthew 5:13-16; Mark 9:49-50; 4:21;

Matthew 5:17-19; Luke 16:17

Matthew 5:20-22

Matthew 5:23-26; Luke 12:58-59

Matthew 5:27-30

Matthew 5:31-32; Luke 16:18

Matthew 5:33-37

Matthew 5:38-41; Luke 6:29-30

Matthew 5:42; Luke 6:34-35

Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 6:27-36

Matthew 6: 1-4

Matthew 6:5-8

Matthew 6:9-12; Luke 11:1-4

Matthew 6:14-15; Luke 11:25-26

Matthew 6:16-19

Matthew 6:19-21; Luke 12:33-34

Matthew 6:22-24; Luke 11:34-36; 16:13

Matthew 6:25-30; Luke 12:22-28

Matthew 6:31-34; Luke 12:29-32

Matthew 7:1-5; Mark 4:24; Luke 6:37-42

Matthew 7:6

Matthew 7:7-11; Luke 11:5-13

Matthew 7:12-14; Luke 6:31

Luke 13:23-24

Luke 13:25-30

Matthew 7:15-20; Luke 6:43-45

Matthew 7:21-23; Luke 6:46

Matthew 7:24-29; Luke 6:47-49

Matthew 8:1-4; Mark 1:40-45; Luke 5:12-16

Matthew 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10

Luke 7:11-17

Matthew 8:19-22; Luke 9:57-62

Matthew 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26

Matthew 9:9-13; Mark 2:13-17; Luke 5:27-32

Matthew 9:14-17; Mark 2:18-22; Luke 5:33-39

Matthew 9:18-22; Mark 5:22-34; Luke 8:40-48

Matthew 9:23-26; Mark 5:35-43; Luke 8:49-56

Matthew 9:27-34

Matthew 9:35-38

Matthew 8:23-27; Mark 4:35-41; Luke 8:22-25

Matthew 8:28-34; Mark 5:1-20; Luke 8:26-39

Matthew 10:1-8; Mark 6:1; Luke 9:1-2

Matthew 10:9-15; Mark 6:8-11; Luke 9:3-5

Matthew 10:16-20; Luke 12:11-12

Matthew 10:21-25; Luke 6:40

Matthew 10:26-31; Mark 4:22-23; Luke 8:17; 12:2-7

Matthew 10:32-35; Mark 8:38; Luke 9:26; 12:8-9, 51-53

Matthew 10:37-42; Mark 9:41; Luke 14:25-33

Footnotes

Commentaries On The Harmony Of The Gospels Vol. 1, John Calvin

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Germany

ISBN: 9783849620509

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

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John Calvin – A Biography

By William Barry

This man, undoubtedly the greatest of Protestant divines, and perhaps, after St. Augustine, the most perseveringly followed by his disciples of any Western writer on theology, was born at Noyon in Picardy, France, 10 July, 1509, and died at Geneva, 27 May, 1564.

A generation divided him from Luther, whom he never met. By birth, education, and temper these two protagonists of the reforming movement were strongly contrasted. Luther was a Saxon peasant, his father a miner; Calvin sprang from the French middle-class, and his father, an attorney, had purchased the freedom of the City of Noyon, where he practised civil and canon law. Luther entered the Order of Augustinian Hermits, took a monk's vows, was made a priest and incurred much odium by marrying a nun. Calvin never was ordained in the Catholic Church; his training was chiefly in law and the humanities; he took no vows. Luther's eloquence made him popular by its force, humour, rudeness, and vulgar style. Calvin spoke to the learned at all times, even when preaching before multitudes. His manner is classical; he reasons on system; he has little humour; instead of striking with a cudgel he uses the weapons of a deadly logic and persuades by a teacher's authority, not by a demagogue's calling of names. He writes French as well as Luther writes German, and like him has been reckoned a pioneer in the modern development of his native tongue. Lastly, if we term the doctor of Wittenberg a mystic, we may sum up Calvin as a scholastic; he gives articulate expression to the principles which Luther had stormily thrown out upon the world in his vehement pamphleteering; and the "Institutes" as they were left by their author have remained ever since the standard of orthodox Protestant belief in all the Churches known as "Reformed." His French disciples called their sect "the religion"; such it has proved to be outside the Roman world.

The family name, spelt in many ways, was Cauvin latinized according to the custom of the age as Calvinus. For some unknown reason the Reformer is commonly called Maître Jean C. His mother, Jeanne Le Franc, born in the Diocese of Cambrai, is mentioned as "beautiful and devout"; she took her little son to various shrines and brought him up a good Catholic. On the father's side, his ancestors were seafaring men. His grandfather settled at Pont l'Evêque near Paris, and had two sons who became locksmiths; the third was Gerard, who turned procurator at Noyon, and there his four sons and two daughters saw the light. He lived in the Place au Blé (Cornmarket). Noyon, a bishop's see, had long been a fief of the powerful old family of Hangest, who treated it as their personal property. But an everlasting quarrel, in which the city took part, went on between the bishop and the chapter. Charles de Hangest, nephew of the too well-known Georges d'Amboise, Archbishop of Rouen, surrendered the bishopric in 1525 to his own nephew John, becoming his vicar-general. John kept up the battle with his canons until the Parliament of Paris intervened, upon which he went to Rome, and at last died in Paris in 1577. This prelate had Protestant kinsfolk; he is charged with having fostered heresy which in those years was beginning to raise its head among the French. Clerical dissensions, at all events, allowed the new doctrines a promising field; and the Calvins were more or less infected by them before 1530.

Gerard's four sons were made clerics and held benefices at a tender age. The Reformer was given one when a boy of twelve, he became Curé of Saint-Martin de Marteville in the Vermandois in 1527, and of Pont l'Eveque in 1529. Three of the boys attended the local Collège des Capettes, and there John proved himself an apt scholar. But his people were intimate with greater folk, the de Montmor, a branch of the line of Hangest, which led to his accompanying some of their children to Paris in 1523, when his mother was probably dead and his father had married again. The latter died in 1531, under excommunication from the chapter for not sending in his accounts. The old man's illness, not his lack of honesty, was, we are told, the cause. Yet his son Charles, nettled by the censure, drew towards the Protestant doctrines. He was accused in 1534 of denying the Catholic dogma of the Eucharist, and died out of the Church in 1536; his body was publicly gibbeted as that of a recusant.

Meanwhile, young John was going through his own trials at the University of Paris, the dean or syndic of which, Noel Bédier, had stood up against Erasmus and bore hard upon Le Fèvre d'Etaples (Stapulensis), celebrated for his translation of the Bible into French. Calvin, a "martinet", or oppidan, in the Collèege de la Marche, made this man's acquaintance (he was from Picardy) and may have glanced into his Latin commentary on St. Paul, dated 1512, which Doumergue considers the first Protestant book emanating from a French pen. Another influence tending the same way was that of Corderius, Calvin's tutor, to whom he dedicated afterwards his annotation of I Thessalonians, remarking, "if there be any good thing in what I have published, I owe it to you". Corderius had an excellent Latin style, his life was austere, and his "Colloquies" earned him enduring fame. But he fell under suspicion of heresy, and by Calvin's aid took refuge in Geneva, where he died September 1564. A third herald of the "New Learning" was George Cop, physician to Francis I, in whose house Calvin found a welcome and gave ear to the religious discussions which Cop favoured. And a fourth was Pierre-Robert d'Olivet of Noyon, who also translated the Scriptures, our youthful man of letters, his nephew, writing (in 1535) a Latin preface to the Old Testament and a French one — his first appearance as a native author — to the New Testament.

By 1527, when no more than eighteen, Calvin's educatlon was complete in its main lines. He had learned to be a humanist and a reformer. The "sudden conversion" to a spiritual life in 1529, of which he speaks, must not be taken quite literally. He had never been an ardent Catholic; but the stories told at one time of his ill-regulated conduct have no foundation; and by a very natural process he went over to the side on which his family were taking their stand. In 1528 he inscribed himself at Orléans as a law student, made friends with Francis Daniel, and then went for a year to Bourges, where he began preaching in private. Margaret d'Angoulême, sister of Francis I, and Duchess of Berry, was living there with many heterodox Germans about her.

He is found again at Paris in 1531. Wolmar had taught him Greek at Bourges; from Vatable he learned Hebrew; and he entertained some relations with the erudite Budaeus. About this date he printed a commentary on Seneca's "De Clementiâ". It was merely an exercise in scholarship, having no political significance. Francis I was, indeed, handling Protestants severely, and Calvin, now Doctor of Law at Orléans, composed, so the story runs, an oration on Christian philosophy which Nicholas Cop delivered on All Saints' Day, 1532, both writer and speaker having to take instant flight from pursuit by the royal inquisitors. This legend has been rejected by modern critics. Calvin spent some time, however, with Canon du Tillet at Angoulême under a feigned designation. In May, 1534, he went to Noyon, gave up his benefice, and, it is said, was imprisoned. But he got away to Nerac in Bearn, the residence of the Duchess Margaret, and there again encountered Le Fèvre, whose French Bible had been condemned by the Sorbonne to the flames. His next visit to Paris fell out during a violent campaign of the Lutherans against the Mass, which brought on reprisals, Etienne de la Forge and others were burnt in the Place de Grève; and Calvin accompanied by du Tillet, escaped — though not without adventures — to Metz and Strasburg. In the latter city Bucer reigned supreme. The leading reformers dictated laws from the pulpit to their adherents, and this journey proved a decisive one for the French humanist, who, though by nature timid and shy, committed himself to a wa...

Table of contents

• John Calvin – A Biography