Therefore let this be a means of recognizing them. For when you hear them speak in this way, you will only be hearing high German (I think he means what we'd call Double Dutch). For God created the tongue for the purpose of expressing thought in order that we might be able to communicate with each other. Consequently, it is a perversion of God's order to pommel the air with a confused sound that cannot be understood, or to try by subtle means to go around one's elbow to get to one's thumb in order to awaken one's hearers and then leave them in such a state.
Besides, the Scriptures ought to be our guide with respect to how God's mysteries are handled. Therefore let us adopt the language that it uses without being lightheaded. For the Lord knows quite well that if He were to speak to us in a manner befitting His majesty, our intelligence would be incapable of reaching that high. Thus He accommodates Himself to our smallness. And as a wet nurse coos to her baby, so He uses toward us an unrefined way of speaking in order to be understood.
Whoever, therefore, reverses this order only succeeds in burying God's truth, which can only be known in the manner that He wills to reveal it to us. That is why we must labour to unravel their obscurities in order to drag them if necessary by force into the light, so that their abominations, which they make a point of hiding, might be known to all the world.
Similarly, every Christian must be warned that when he hears them garbling as they do he must cut them off immediately at the spigot and say to them, "Either speak the language that the Lord has taught us and which He uses in His Scriptures, or go speak to the rocks and trees!"
Besides, the Scriptures ought to be our guide with respect to how God's mysteries are handled. Therefore let us adopt the language that it uses without being lightheaded. For the Lord knows quite well that if He were to speak to us in a manner befitting His majesty, our intelligence would be incapable of reaching that high. Thus He accommodates Himself to our smallness. And as a wet nurse coos to her baby, so He uses toward us an unrefined way of speaking in order to be understood.
Whoever, therefore, reverses this order only succeeds in burying God's truth, which can only be known in the manner that He wills to reveal it to us. That is why we must labour to unravel their obscurities in order to drag them if necessary by force into the light, so that their abominations, which they make a point of hiding, might be known to all the world.
Similarly, every Christian must be warned that when he hears them garbling as they do he must cut them off immediately at the spigot and say to them, "Either speak the language that the Lord has taught us and which He uses in His Scriptures, or go speak to the rocks and trees!"
1 comment:
I didn't think that Pete Doherty et al would be John Calvin's kind of band. Not my cuppa tea either.
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