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Scripture Texts with Expositions and Sentence-prayers from Calvin's Commentaries on the Minor Prophets

John Calvin

The prayers of John Calvin, however, have received little attention, as compared with the fame which crowns his theological writings. His commentaries upon Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the minor prophets were originally delivered in the form of lectures, each followed by appropriate petitions. Both lectures and prayers were extemporaneous. In his epistle dedicatory, prefaced to the commentary upon the minor prophets, and addressed to the King of Sweden, Calvin says: "Had it been in my power I would rather have tried to prevent the wider circulation of that extemporaneous kind of teaching, intended for the particular benefit of my auditory, and with which benefit I was abundantly satisfied." John Budaeus, in an- other preface, piously exhorts that we pray for the Spirit of God, that we may come to the reading of Scripture instructed by him. "And for this end," he says, "much help may be given us by the short prayers which we have taken care to add at the close of every lecture as gathered by us with the same care and fidelity as the lectures were ; and the ignorant may also have in these a pattern, as it were, painted be- fore them, by which they may form their prayers from the words of Scripture. For as at the be- ginning of the lectures he ever used the same form of prayer, so he was wont ever to finish every lecture by a new prayer formed at the time, as given him by the Spirit of God, and accommodated to the subject of the lecture." (from the Introduction)