John Calvin Quotes
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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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Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not at hand.
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The only right stewardship is that which is tested by the rule of love.
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Whatever a man has in superabundance is owed, of natural right, to the poor for their sustenance. So Ambrosius says, and it is also to be found in the Decretum Gratiani: The bread which you withhold belongs to the hungry: the clothing you shut away, to the naked: and the money you bury in the earth is the redemption and freedom of the penniless.
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How do we know that God has elected us before the creation of the world? By believing in Jesus Christ.
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If we are proud of our talents we betray our lack of gratitude to God.
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Free-will cannot will good and of necessity serves sin.
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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 Human heart is an idol factory.
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Things that are seen are temporal; things that are unseen are eternal.
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Unless men establish their complete happiness in God, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to him.
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True peace consists in not separating ourselves from the will of God.
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Hypocrisy can plunge the mind of a man into a dark abyss, when he believes his own self-flattery instead of God's verdict.
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But a most pernicious error widely prevails that Scripture has only so much weight as is conceded to it by the consent of the church. As if the eternal and inviolable truth of God depended upon the decision of men!
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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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We are nowhere forbidden to laugh, or be satisfied with food...or to be delighted with music or to drink wine.
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There are sons of God who do not yet appear so to us, but now do so to God; and there are those who, on account of some arrogated or temporal grace, are called so by us, but are not so to God.
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All truth is God's truth.
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The blindness of unbelievers in no way detracts from the clarity of the gospel; the sun is no less bright because blind men do not perceive its light.
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Since no daily responses are given from heaven, and the Scriptures are the only record in which God has been pleased to consign His truth to perpetual remembrance, the full authority which they ought to possess with the faithful is not recognized unless they are believed to have come from heaven as directly as if God had been heard giving utterance to them.
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The whole comes to this, that Christ, when he produces faith in us by the agency of his Spirit, at the same time ingrafts us into his body, that we may become partakers of all spiritual blessings.
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It is a promise which eminently deserves our observation that all who are united to Christ and acknowledge Him to be Christ and Mediator will remain to the end safe from all danger, for what is said of the body of the Church belongs to each of its members since they are one in Christ.
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Faith consists, not in ignorance, but in knowledge, and that, not only of God, but also of the divine will.
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God would remain absolutely hidden if we were not illuminated by the brightness of Christ.