What, then? you will say, Is there no difference between the Old and the
New Testaments? What is to become of the many passages of Scripture in
which they are contrasted as things differing most widely from each
other? I readily admit the differences which are pointed out in
Scripture, but still hold that they derogate in no respect from their
established unity, as will be seen after we have considered them in
their order. These differences (so far as I have been able to observe
them and can remember) seem to be chiefly four, or, if you choose to add
a fifth, I have no objections. I hold and think I will be able to show,
that they all belong to the mode of administration rather than to the
substance. In this way, there is nothing in them to prevent the promises
of the Old and New Testament from remaining the same, Christ being the
foundation of both.
The first difference then is, that though, in old
time, the Lord was pleased to direct the thoughts of his people, and
raise their minds to the heavenly inheritance, yet, that their hope of
it might be the better maintained, he held it forth, and, in a manner,
gave a foretaste of it under earthly blessings, whereas the gift of
future life, now more clearly and lucidly revealed by the Gospel, leads
our minds directly to meditate upon it, the inferior mode of exercise
formerly employed in regard to the Jews being now laid aside. Those who
attend not to the divine purpose in this respect, suppose that God's
ancient people ascended no higher than the blessings which were promised
to the body. They hear the land of Canaan so often named as the
special, and as it were the only, reward of the Divine Law to its
worshipers; they hear that the severest punishment which the Lord
denounces against the transgressors of the Law is expulsion from the
possession of that land and dispersion into other countries; they see
that this forms almost the sum of the blessings and curses declared by
Moses; and from these things they confidently conclude that the Jews
were separated from other nations not on their own account, but for
another reason, viz., that the Christian Church might have an emblem in
whose outward shape might be seen an evidence of spiritual things. But
since the Scripture sometimes demonstrates that the earthly blessings
thus bestowed were intended by God himself to guide them to a heavenly
hope, it shows great unskilfulness, not to say dullness, not to attend
to this mode of dispensation. The ground of controversy is this: our
opponents hold that the land of Canaan was considered by the Israelites
as supreme and final happiness, and now, since Christ was manifested,
typifies to us the heavenly inheritance; whereas we maintain that, in
the earthly possession which the Israelites enjoyed, they beheld, as in a
mirror, the future inheritance which they believed to be reserved for
them in heaven.
- John Calvin (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.11.1)
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