John Calvin Quotes
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The whole gospel is contained in Christ.
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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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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.
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The true wisdom of man consists in the knowledge of God the creator and Redeemer.
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It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility "faith"! (Institutio III.2.3)
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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.
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If everything proceeded according to their wishes, they would not understand what it means to follow God.
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The only skills I have the patience to learn are those that have no real application in life.
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If God were not to test us, there would be no patience.
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Even if this earth is only a vestibule, we ought undoubtedly to make such a use of its blessing that we are assisted rather than delayed in our journey.
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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.
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To search for wisdom apart from Christ means not simply foolhardiness but utter insanity.
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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.
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If grace acts in us, grace, and not we who do the work, will be crowned.
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I don't need to compromise my principles, because they don't have the slightest bearing on what happens to me anyway.
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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.
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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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He who has learned to look to God in everything he does is at the same time diverted from all vain thoughts.
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In knowing God, each of us also knows himself.
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The excellence of the Church does not consist in multitude but in purity.
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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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When the Bible speaks, God speaks.
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For what accords better and more aptly with faith than to acknowledge ourselves divested of all virtue that we may be clothed by God, devoid of all goodness that we may be filled by him, the slaves of sin that he may give us freedom, blind that he may enlighten, lame that he may cure, and feeble that he may sustain us; to strip ourselves of all ground of glorying that he alone may shine forth glorious, and we be glorified in him?
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To will is human, to will the bad is of fallen nature, but to will the good is of Grace.