John Calvin Quotes
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Our physical illnesses serve us for medicines to purge us from worldly affections and retrench what is superfluous in us, and since they are to us the messengers of death, we ought to learn to have one foot raised to take our departure when it shall please God.
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Doubtful prayer is no prayer at all.
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Humility is the beginning of true intelligence.
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Now the great thing is this: we are consecrated and dedicated to God in order that we may thereafter think, speak, meditate, and do, nothing except to his glory. For a sacred thing may not be applied to profane uses without marked injury to him.
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We have been adopted as sons by the Lord with this one condition; that our life expresses Christ, the bond of our adoption. Accordingly, unless we give and devote ourselves to righteousness, we not only revolt from our Creator with wicked perfidy, but we also abjure our Savior Himself.
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Assuredly there is but one way in which to achieve what is not merely difficult but utterly against human nature: to love those who hate us, to repay their evil deeds with benefits, to return blessings for reproaches. It is that we remember not to consider men's evil intention but to look upon the image of God in them, which cancels and effaces their transgressions, and with its beauty and dignity allures us to love and embrace them.
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Faith is not a distant view, but a warm embrace of Christ.
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Whatever a person may be like, we must still love them because we love God.
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We unjustly defraud God of his right, unless each of us lives and dies in dependence on His sovereign pleasure.
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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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Let our chief goal, O God, be your glory, and to enjoy You forever.
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Unless we endeavor to do good to our neighbor, through our cruelty we transgress this law.
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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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Whomever the Lord has adopted and deemed worthy of His fellowship ought to prepare themselves for a hard, toilsome, and unquiet life, crammed with very many and various kinds of evil.
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Without Christ, sciences in every department are vain....The man who knows not God is vain, though he should be conversant with every branch of learning. Nay more, we may affirm this too with truth, that these choice gifts of God -- expertness of mind, acuteness of judgment, liberal sciences, and acquaintance with languages, are in a manner profaned in every instance in which they fall to the lot of wicked men.
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There is no place for faith if we expect God to fulfill immediately what he promises.
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Scripture points out this difference between believers and unbelievers; the latter, as old slaves of their incurable perversity, cannot endure the rod; but the former, like children of noble birth, profit by repentance and correction.
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This is what entertainment is all about- idiots, explosives and falling anvils.
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Joy and thanksgiving expressed in prayer and praise according to the Word of God are the heart of the Church's worship.
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Involvement in public life provides the opportunity to shape our manners in accordance with civil justice.
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When we know God to be our Father, should we not desire that he be known as such by all? And if we do not have this passion, that all creatures do him homage, is it not a sign that his glory means little to us?
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Prayer doesn't change things - God changes things in answer to prayer.
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It is entirely the work of grace and a benefit conferred by it that our heart is changed from a stony one to one of flesh, that our will is made new, and that we, created anew in heart and mind, at length will what we ought to will.
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Faith and patience are exceptional virtues in those that suffer. Patience is the fruit and evidence of faith.