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Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.
John Calvin -
Let us consider this settled, that no one has made progress in the school of Christ who does not joyfully await the day of death and final resurrection.
John Calvin
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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.
John Calvin -
The highest honor in the church is not government but service.
John Calvin -
Original sin, therefore, appears to be a hereditary, depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused through all the parts of the soul, rendering us obnoxious to the divine wrath and producing in us those works which the scripture calls 'works of.
John Calvin -
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?
John Calvin -
Joy and thanksgiving expressed in prayer and praise according to the Word of God are the heart of the Church's worship.
John Calvin -
God is undoubtedly ready to pardon whenever the sinner turns. Therefore, he does not will his death, in so far as he wills repentance. But experience shows that this will, for the repentance of those whom he invites to himself, is not such as to make him touch all their hearts. Still, it cannot be said that he acts deceitfully; for though the external word only renders, those who hear it, and do not obey it, inexcusable, it is still truly regarded as an evidence of the grace by which he reconciles men to himself.
John Calvin
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Seeing God hath thus set us at liberty, what rashness it is for worms of the earth to make new laws; as though God had not been wise enough.
John Calvin -
The sufferings of Christ are the means of forgiveness of sin and eternal glory.
John Calvin -
There is no place for faith if we expect God to fulfill immediately what he promises.
John Calvin -
Mingled vanity and pride appear in this, that when miserable men do seek after God, instead of ascending higher than themselves as they ought to do, they measure him by their own carnal stupidity, and neglecting solid inquiry, fly off to indulge their curiosity in vain speculation.
John Calvin -
The excellence of the Church does not consist in multitude but in purity.
John Calvin -
To search for wisdom apart from Christ means not simply foolhardiness but utter insanity.
John Calvin
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In a way, the futile excuses many people use to cover their superstitions are demolished. They think it is enough to have some sort of religious fervor, however ridiculous, not realizing that true religion must be according to God's will as the perfect measure; that He can never deny Himself and is no mere spirit form to be changed around according to individual preference.
John Calvin -
To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.
John Calvin -
The world was no doubt made, that it might be a theatre of the divine glory.
John Calvin -
Moreover, a true Christian will not ascribe any prosperity to his own diligence, industry, or good fortune, but he will acknowledge that God is the author of it.
John Calvin -
If God were not to test us, there would be no patience.
John Calvin -
No man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone.
John Calvin
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Let it stand, therefore, as an indubitable truth, which no engines can shake, that the mind of man is so entirely alienated from the righteousness of God that he cannot conceive, desire, or design any thing but what is wicked, distorted, foul, impure, and iniquitous; that his heart is so thoroughly envenomed by sin that it can breathe out nothing but corruption and rottenness; that if some men occasionally make a show of goodness, their mind is ever interwoven with hypocrisy and deceit, their soul inwardly bound with the fetters of wickedness.
John Calvin -
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?
John Calvin -
Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God.
John Calvin -
No one in this earthly prison of the body has sufficient strength of his own to press forward with a due degree of watchfulness, and the great majority of Christians are kept down with such great weakness that they stagger and halt and even creep on the ground, and so make very slight advances.
John Calvin