John Calvin Quotes
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Unless we fix certain hours in the day for prayer, it easily slips from our memory.
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No one has rightly denied himself unless he has wholly resigned himself to the Lord and is willing to leave every detail to his good pleasure. If we put ourselves in such a frame of mind, then, whatever may happen to us, we shall never feel miserable or accuse God falsely because of our lot.
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The blood of Christ is necessary to purge the faults clinging to our best works.
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If we are given gold, would we not test it to determine it's value? If we doubted its genuineness - we would test it by fire...and so God with us.
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In our good works nothing is our own.
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The surest source of destruction to men is to obey themselves.
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For, since the fall of Adam had brought disgrace upon all his posterity, God restores those, whom He separates as His own, so that their condition may be better than that of all other nations. At the same time it must be remarked, that this grace of renewal is effaced in many who have afterwards profaned it
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To be pure in heart is to take no delight in cunning, but converse sincerely with men, and express nothing, by word or look, which is not felt in the heart.
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Repentance is the true turning of our life to God, a turning that arises from a pure and earnest fear of Him; and it consists in the mortification of the flesh and the renewing of the Spirit.
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Faith and hope...are the wings by which our souls, rising above the world, are lifted up to God.
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When we recognize the rod of a father, should we not show ourselves docile children rather than rebelliously desperate men who have been hardened in their evil doings?
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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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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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Humility is the beginning of true intelligence.
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Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.
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Because I know that I am not my own master, I offer my heart as a true sacrifice to the Lord.
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All our words ought to be filled with true sweetness and grace; and this will be so if we mingle the useful with the sweet.
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All the more vile is the stupidity of those persons who open heaven to all the impious and unbelieving without the grace of Him whom Scripture commonly teaches to be the only door whereby we enter into salvation.
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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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The most accomplished in the Scripture are fools, unless they acknowledge that they have need of God for their schoolmaster all the days of their life.
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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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If God does nothing random, there must always be something to learn.
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A soul, therefore, when deprived of the Word of God, is given up unarmed to the devil for destruction.
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I have not so great a struggle with my vices, great and numerous as they are, as I have with my impatience. My efforts are not absolutely useless; yet I have never been able to conquer this ferocious wild beast.