John Calvin Quotes
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When a certain shameless fellow mockingly asked a pious old man what God had done before the creation of the world the latter aptly countered that he had been building hell for the curious.
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There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.
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But, as sculpture and painting are gifts of God, what I insist on is, that both shall be used purely and lawfully, that gifts which the Lord has bestowed upon us, for His glory and our good, shall not be preposterously abused, nay, shall not be perverted to our destruction.
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By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which He determined with Himself whatever He wished to happen with regard to every man.
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All the arts come from God and are to be respected as divine inventions.
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The more we are oppressed by the cross, the fuller will be our spiritual joy.
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Man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's majesty.
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All true knowledge of God is born out of obedience.
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The majesty of God in itself goes beyond the capacity of human understanding and cannot be comprehended by it. We must adore its loftiness rather than investigate it, so that we do not remain overwhelmed by so great a splendor.
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It behooves us to accomplish what God requires of us, even when we are in the greatest despair respecting the results.
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Whoever shall now contend that it is unjust to put heretics and blasphemers to death will knowingly and willingly incur their very guilt.
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For earthly princes lay aside their power when they rise up against God, and are unworthy to be reckoned among the number of mankind. We ought, rather, utterly to defy them.
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Wherever we find the Word of God surely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ, there, it is not to be doubted, is a church of God.
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Our true wisdom is to embrace with meek docility, and without reservation, whatever the holy scriptures have delivered.
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The Scriptures should be read with the aim of finding Christ in them. Whoever turns aside from this object, even though he wears himself out all his life in learning, he will never reach the knowledge of the truth.
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Joy and patience are far above our strength... We must persevere in prayer that he may not permit our hearts to faint... Prayer and perseverance are necessary in our daily conflicts. The best remedy to the weariness is diligence in prayer.
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At this day . . . the earth sustains on her bosom many monster minds, minds which are not afraid to employ the seed of Deity deposited in human nature as a means of suppressing the name of God. Can anything be more detestable than this madness in man, who, finding God a hundred times both in his body and his soul, makes his excellence in this respect a pretext for denying that there is a God? He will not say that chance has made him different from the brutes; . . . but, substituting Nature as the architect of the universe, he suppresses the name of God.
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The gospel is not a doctrine of the tongue, but of life. It cannot be grasped by reason and memory only, but it is fully understood when it possesses the whole soul and penetrates to the inner recesses of the heart.
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The human heart is a factory of idols...Everyon e of us is, from his mother's womb, expert in inventing idols.
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True wisdom consists in two things: Knowledge of God and Knowledge of Self.
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Christ's intercession is the continual application of his death to our salvation.
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Without the Gospel everything is useless and vain.
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The first part of a good work is the will, the second is vigorous effort in the doing of it. God is the author of both. It is, therefore, robbery from God to arrogate anything to ourselves, either in the will or the act.
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We are not to reflect on the wickedness of men but to look to the image of God in them, an image which, covering and obliterating their faults, an image which, by its beauty and dignity, should allure us to love and embrace them.