John Calvin Quotes
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First of all, Scripture draws our attention to this, that if we want ease and tranquility in our lives, we should resign ourselves and all that we have to the will of God, and at the same time we should surrender our affections to him as our Conqueror and Overlord.
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The vices of which we are full we carefully hide from others, and we flatter ourselves with the notion that they are small and trivial; we sometimes even embrace them as virtues.
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Peace and friendship are an amiable thing among men. They be so indeed, and we ought to seek them to the uttermost of our power. But yet for all that, we must set such store by God's truth, that if all the world should be set on fire for the maintenance thereof, we should not stick at it.
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True faith is ever connected with hope.
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Where God's Spirit does not reign, there is no humility, and men ever swell with inward pride.
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The human heart has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood works, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself.
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The very word baptizé, however, signifies to immerse; and it is certain that immersion was the practice of the ancient Church.
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Christ is the most perfect image of God, into which we are so renewed as to bear the image of God, in knowledge, purity, righteousness, and true holiness.
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The only right stewardship is that which is tested by the rule of love.
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The sum is, that the worship of God must be spiritual, in order that it may correspond with His nature. For although Moses only speaks of idolatry, yet there is no doubt but that by synecdoche, as in all the rest of the law, he condemns all fictitious services which men in their ingenuity have invented.
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It is a most blessed thing to be subject to the sovereignty of God.
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Hence that dread and amazement with which as Scripture uniformly relates holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God. Men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance until they have.
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Christ is much more powerful to save, than Adam was to destroy.
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In vain people busy themselves with finding any good of man's own in his will. For any mixture of the power of freewill that men strive to mingle with God's grace is nothing but a corruption of grace. It is just as if one were to dilute wine with muddy, bitter water.
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If the gospel be not preached, Jesus Christ is, as it were, buried.
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If we believe heaven to be our country, it is better for us to transmit our wealth thither, than to retain it here, where we may lose it by a sudden removal.
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There is also an old proverb, that they who pay much attention to the body generally neglect the soul.
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Justification by faith is the hinge on which all true religion turns.
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No one can travel so far that he does not make some progess each day. So let us never give up. Then we shall move forward daily in the Lord's way. And let us never despair because of our limited success. Even though it is so much less than we would like, our labour is not wasted when today is better than yesterday!
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Where is our acknowledgement of God if our thoughts are fixed on the glamour of our garments?
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We say, then, that Scripture clearly proves this much, that God by his eternal and immutable counsel determined once for all those whom it was his pleasure one day to admit to salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, it was his pleasure to doom to destruction. We maintain that this counsel, as regards the elect, is founded on his free mercy, without any respect to human worth, while those whom he dooms to destruction are excluded from access to life by a just and blameless, but at the same time incomprehensible judgment.
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Creatures are so governed by the secret counsel of God, that nothing happens but what he has knowingly and willingly decreed.
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Concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, we must also be aware that he is our Advocate, and that without him we cannot approach God.
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This is plainly to ascribe divinity to 'free will.'