Calvin: OT temporal judgments

Reading through the Bible in a year actually increases the sense of physical judgment in the OT, which is far from comfortable. Today read these words from Calvin which are an interesting thought-starter in this area:

Thus as God's benefits were more conspicuous in earthly things [the land, harvests, peace etc], so also were his punishments. The ignorant, not considering this analogy and congruity, to call it that, between punishments and rewards, wonder at such great changeableness in God. He, who was once so prompt to mete out stern and terrifying punishments for every human transgression, now seems to have laid aside his former wrathful mood and punishes much more gently and rarely. Why, on that account, they even go so far as to imagine different gods for the Old and New testaments, like the Manichees! But we shall readily dispose of these misgivings if we turn our attention to this dispensation of God which I have noted. He willed that, for the time during which he gave his covenant to the people of Israel in a veiled form, the grace of future and eternal happiness be signified and figured under earthly benefits, the gravity of spiritual death under physical punishments.

Institutes 2.9.3 (Battles, p.452-3)