John Calvin Quotes (35 Quotes)


    There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.

    There is no work, however vile or sordid, that does not glisten before God.

    Each eye can have its vision separately but when we are looking at anything our vision, which in itself is divided, joins up and unites in order to give itself as a whole to the object that is put before it.

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

    However many blessings we expect from God, His infinite liberality will always exceed all our wishes and our thoughts.


    Yet consider now, whether women are not quite past sense and reason, when they want to rule over men.

    God tolerates even our stammering, and pardons our ignorance whenever something inadvertently escapes us - as, indeed, without this mercy there would be no freedom to pray.

    Seeing that a Pilot steers the ship in which we sail, who will never allow us to perish even in the midst of shipwrecks, there is no reason why our minds should be overwhelmed with fear and overcome with weariness.

    All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the benefit of our neighbors.

    God foreordained, for His own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation . . .

    A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent.

    God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.

    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.

    Knowledge of the sciences is so much smoke apart from the heavenly science of Christ.

    For though we very truly hear that the kingdom of God will be filled with splendor, joy, happiness and glory, yet when these things are spoken of, they remain utterly remote from our perception, and as it were, wrapped in obscurities, until that day

    We must remember that Satan has his miracles, too.

    For there is no one so great or mighty that he can avoid the misery that will rise up against him when he resists and strives against God.

    Augustine does not disagree with this when he teaches that it is a faculty of the reason and the will to choose good with the assistance of grace; evil, when grace is absent.

    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

    Is it faith to understand nothing, and merely submit your convictions implicitly to the Church?

    The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.

    Nobody seriously believes the universe was made by God without being persuaded that He takes care of His works.

    There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence.

    The most perfect way of seeking God, and the most suitable order, is not for us to attempt with bold curiosity to penetrate to the investigation of His essence, which we ought more to adore than meticulously to search out, but for us to contemplate H

    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.

    Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a day set him on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

    Hence that dread and amazement with which as Scripture uniformly relates holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance until they have

    All men were created to busy themselves with labor for the common good.

    You must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the completion of joy.

    No man is excluded from calling upon God, the gate of salvation is set open unto all men: neither is there any other thing which keepeth us back from entering in, save only our own unbelief.

    Let us not cease to do the utmost, that we may incessantly go forward in the way of the Lord and let us not despair of the smallness of our accomplishments

    Though Satan instills his poison, and fans the flames of our corrupt desires within us,we are yet not carried by any external force to the commission of sin, but our own flesh entices us, and we willingly yield to its allurements

    Man's mind is like a store of idolatry and superstition; so much so that if a man believes his own mind it is certain that he will forsake God and forge some idol in his own brain.

    I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels.

    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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