into Italian, Spanish, English, German, Dacian-Roumanian, Hungarian, and even Greek and Hebrew (including German-Hebrew), it rapidly penetrated every corner of the Reformed world. At least thirteen editions of it in English had been printed before the Westminster Assembly convened. This is the way its opening questions stand in the old-English translation; “What is the principall and chief end of man’s life? To know God. What moveth thee to say so? Because He hath created us and placed us in this world to set foorth his glorie in us: And it is good reason that we employ our whole life to his glorie, seeing he is the beginning and fountaine thereof. What is, then, the chief felicitie of man? Even the self-same: I meane to know God and to have his glorie shewed foorth in us. Why dosest thou call this man’s chief felicitie? Because that without it, our condition or state were more miserable than the state of brute beastes. Hereby then we may evidently see that there can no such miserie come unto man, as not to live in the knowledge of God? That is most certaine. But what is the true and right knowledge of God? When a man so knoweth God, that he giveth him due honour (sic). Which is the way to honor (sic) God aright? It is to put our whole trust and confidence in him; to studie to serve him in obeying his wil; to call upon him in our necessities, seeking our salvation and all good thinges at his hand; and finally to acknowledge both with hearte and mouth that he is the lively fountaine of all goodnesse."[1] Here the knowledge of God is presented as the chief end and highest good of man;[2] and this knowledge of God is resolved into the glorification of God in us,[3] which again is
- ↑ We have quoted from Dunlop’s Collection, vol. II, 1722, pp. 141-2. The Catechism is printed also in Bonar’s Catechisms of the Scottish Reformation, 1866. The French and Latin texts may be consulted in Calvin’s Opp. vi, pp. 9 sq.
- ↑ Latin: praecipuus finis, and summum bonum. French: la principale fin de la vie humaine, and le souverain bien des hommes.
- ↑ Latin: quo glorificetur in nobis. French: pour estre glorifie en nous.
