Quotes About John Calvin

Every one of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master craftsman of idols.

Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, there a church of God exists, even if it swarms with many faults.

The glory of God shines, indeed, in all creatures on high and below, but never more brightly than in the cross.

There are indeed solid ontological foundations for an understanding of signals of transformation. Both Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin take the notion of God to be a direct perception of God's existence, one unmediated by reason, by revelation, by society, or by psychological need.

Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin concur on the claim that there is a kind of natural knowledge of God (and anything on which Calvin and Aquinas are in accord is something to which we had better pay careful attention).

Repentance is the true turning of our life to God, a turning that arises from a pure and earnest fear of Him; and it consists in the mortification of the flesh and the renewing of the Spirit.

Involvement in public life provides the opportunity to shape our manners in accordance with civil justice.

Life is not found in commandments or declarations of penalties, but in the promise of mercy and only in a gratuitous promise.

Union with Christ is right at the center of the Christian doctrine of salvation. The whole of our relationship with God can be summed up in such terms. John Calvin agreed when he wrote: "For we await salvation from him not because he appears to us afar off, but because he makes us, ingrafted into his body, participants not only in all his benefits but also in himself."1

There is no medium between the two things: the earth must either be worthless in our estimation, or keep us enslaved by an intemperate love of it.

He regards it as the highest insult for the wicked to boast of His covenant while profaning His sacred Name by their whole lives.

It is not necessary that faith and repentance should always precede baptism. They are only required from those whose age makes them capable of both. It will be sufficient, then, if, after infants have grown up, they exhibit the power of their baptism." - John Calvin

In vain do   Papists, Mahometans, and other sects, boast of their antiquity, while   they are mere counterfeits of the true, the pure religion.

The frequent mention of the glory of God ought not to be regarded as superfluous, for what is infinite cannot be too strongly expressed.

We both felt that the chief virtue of an interpreter consists in clarity combined with brevity. And

Those who, rejecting Scripture, imagine that they have some peculiar way of penetrating to God, are to be deemed not so much under the influence of error as madness.

In one word, not to dwell longer on this, give heed, and you will at once perceive that ignorance of Providence is the greatest of all miseries, and the knowledge of it the highest happiness.

This was why I published the Institutes — to defend against unjust slander my brothers whose death was precious in the Lord's sight. A

For unless we realize our own helpless misery, we shall never know how much we need the remedy which Christ brings, nor come to him with the fervent love we owe him. But

As age and weakness grew upon him, so he hastened his labour; and, according to his petition to God, he in manner ended his life with his work, for he lived not long after. So

It is no small evil to quench the light   of the Gospel, to lay a snare for consciences, and to remove the   distinction between the Old and New Testaments.

And this is   the origin of freewill, that Adam wished to be independent, [124] and   dared to try what he was able to do.

Therefore, it is blasphemous to give the title Son to anyone but Christ.

He is always careful to take account of the unity and harmony of Scripture teaching. His expositions are not therefore afflicted with the vice of expounding particular passages without respect to the teaching of Scripture elsewhere and without respect to the system of truth set forth in the Word of God.