John Calvin Quotes
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Unless we endeavor to do good to our neighbor, through our cruelty we transgress this law.
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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.
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For it was not after we were reconciled to him by the blood of his Son that he began to love us, but he loved us before the foundation of the world, that with his only begotten Son we too might be sons of God before we were anything at all.
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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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There is no place for faith if we expect God to fulfill immediately what he promises.
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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.
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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.
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My heart I give you, Lord, eagerly and entirely.
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The excellence of the Church does not consist in multitude but in purity.
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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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The world was no doubt made, that it might be a theatre of the divine glory.
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If God were not to test us, there would be no patience.
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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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You cannot imagine a more certain rule or a more powerful suggestion than this, that all the blessings we enjoy are divine deposits which we have received on this condition that we distribute them to others.
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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.
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Prayers will never reach God unless they are founded on free mercy.
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Prayer is the chief exercise of faith.
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The Gospel acts without threats... it teaches us about the supreme goodwill of God towards us.
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To will is human, to will the bad is of fallen nature, but to will the good is of Grace.
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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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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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For our hearts are enfeebled by prosperity, so that we cannot make the effort to pray.
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God orders what we cannot do, that we may know what we ought to ask him.
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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.