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John Calvin on Jude 1:13

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Jude1:13

13. Raging waves of the sea. Why this was added, we may learn more fully from the words of Peter: [2 Peter 2:17,18] it was to shew, that being inflated with pride, they breathed out, or rather cast out the scum of high-flown stuff of words in grandiloquent style. At the same time they brought forth nothing spiritual, their object being on the contrary to make men as stupid as brute animals. Such, as it has been before stated, are the fanatics of our day, who call themselves Libertines. You may justly say that they make only rumbling sounds; for, despising common language, they form for themselves an exotic idiom, I know not what. They seem at one time to carry their disciples above heaven, then they suddenly fall down to beastly errors, for they imagine a state of innocency in which there is no difference between baseness and honesty; they imagine a spiritual life, when fear is extinguished, and when every one heedlessly indulges himself; they imagine that we become gods, because God absorbs the spirits when they quit their bodies. With the more care and reverence ought the simplicity of Scripture to be studied, lest, by reasoning more refinedly than is right, we should not draw men to heaven, but on the contrary be involved in manifold labyrinths. He therefore calls them wandering stars, because they dazzled the eyes by a sort of evanescent light.

Jude 14-16

14. And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,

14. Prius autem etiam de iis vaticinatus est septimus ab Adam Enoch, dicens, Ecce venit Dominus in sanctis millibus suis,

15. To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

15. Ut faciat judicium adversus omnes, et redarguat ex eis omnes impios de factis omnibus impietatis quae impie patrarunt deque omnibus duris quae loquuti sunt adversus Deum peccatores impii.

16. These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage.

16. Hi sunt murmuratores, queruli, juxta concupiscentias suas ambulantes, et os illorum loquitur tumida, admirantes personas, utilitatis gratia.

John Calvin, Commentaries, Jude 1:13. Public domain.

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