Top 411 Quotes & Sayings by John Calvin - Page 3

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.

Doctrine is not an affair of the tongue but of the life.

The very word baptizé, however, signifies to immerse; and it is certain that immersion was the practice of the ancient Church.

God is not limited to any person, but calls freely whomsoever He pleases, and bestows on those who are called whatever rewards He thinks fit.

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.

Things that are seen are temporal; things that are unseen are eternal.

The Bible is the sceptre by which the Heavenly King rules His Church.

There can be no courage in men unless God supports them by his Word.

Faith alone saves, but the faith that saves is not alone.

The evil in our desires typically does not lie in what we want, but that we want it too much.

Wherefore all theology, when separated from Christ, is not only vain and confused, but is also mad, deceitful, and spurious; for, though the philosophers sometimes utter excellent sayings, yet they have nothing but what is short-lived, and even mixed up with wicked and erroneous sentiments.

Justification by faith is the hinge on which all true religion turns.

If we are proud of our talents we betray our lack of gratitude to God.

We say, then, that Scripture clearly proves this much, that God by his eternal and immutable counsel determined once for all those whom it was his pleasure one day to admit to salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, it was his pleasure to doom to destruction. We maintain that this counsel, as regards the elect, is founded on his free mercy, without any respect to human worth, while those whom he dooms to destruction are excluded from access to life by a just and blameless, but at the same time incomprehensible judgment

Let that ethical philosophy therefore of free-will be far from a Christian mind.

The Holy Spirit is the bond by which Christ efficaciously unites us to himself.

Without the Gospel everything is useless and vain.

Man with all his shrewdness is as stupid about understanding by himself the mysteries of God, as an ass is incapable of understanding musical harmony.

He who has learned to look to God in everything he does is at the same time diverted from all vain thoughts.

In knowing God, each of us also knows himself.

The true wisdom of man consists in the knowledge of God the creator and Redeemer.

If grace acts in us, grace, and not we who do the work, will be crowned.

Christians rejoice even while they truly sorrow - because their rejoicing is in the hope of heaven... While joy overcomes sorrow, it does not put an end to it.

Accursed is that peace of which revolt from God is the bond, and blessed are those contentions by which it is necessary to maintain the kingdom of Christ.

...nothing good can proceed from our will until it be formed again, and that after it is formed again in so far as it is good, it is of God, and not of us.

Since no daily responses are given from heaven, and the Scriptures are the only record in which God has been pleased to consign His truth to perpetual remembrance, the full authority which they ought to possess with the faithful is not recognized unless they are believed to have come from heaven as directly as if God had been heard giving utterance to them.

God would remain absolutely hidden if we were not illuminated by the brightness of Christ.

In our good works nothing is our own.

The whole world is a theatre for the display of the divine goodness, wisdom, justice, and power, but the Church is the orchestra, as it were—the most conspicuous part of it; and the nearer the approaches are that God makes to us, the more intimate and condescending the communication of his benefits, the more attentively are we called to consider them.

The Human heart is an idol factory.

The Gospel acts without threats... it teaches us about the supreme goodwill of God towards us.

In truth we know by experience that song has great force and vigour to move and inflame the hearts of men to invoke and praise God with a more vehement and ardent zeal.

Doubtful prayer is no prayer at all.

The principle exercise which the children of god have is to pray. For in this way they give true proof of their faith.

Creatures are so governed by the secret counsel of God, that nothing happens but what he has knowingly and willingly decreed.

On the one hand, undeserved success gives no satisfaction... but, on the other hand, well-deserved failure gives no satisfaction either.

Concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, we must also be aware that he is our Advocate, and that without him we cannot approach God.

The answer of our prayers is secured by the fact that in rejecting them God would in a certain sense deny His own nature.

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.

I have never seen either a drop of piety or a grain of truth or ingenuousness - nay, I have never found common sense in any Jew.

When we know God to be our Father, should we not desire that he be known as such by all? And if we do not have this passion, that all creatures do him homage, is it not a sign that his glory means little to us?

The whole gospel is contained in Christ.

The Scriptures obtain full authority among believers only when men regard them as having sprung from heaven, as if there the living words of God were heard.

True faith is ever connected with hope.

The name of Christ excludes all merit of our own.

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.

In vain people busy themselves with finding any good of man's own in his will. For any mixture of the power of freewill that men strive to mingle with God's grace is nothing but a corruption of grace. It is just as if one were to dilute wine with muddy, bitter water.

The church is the gathering of God's children, where they can be helped and fed like babies and then guided by her motherly care, grow up to manhood in maturity of faith.

Unless we fix certain hours in the day for prayer, it easily slips from our memory.

For Scripture is the school of the Holy Spirit, in which, as nothing is omitted that is both necessary and useful to know, so nothing is taught but what is expedient to know. Therefore we must guard against depriving believers of anything disclosed about predestination in Scripture, lest we seem either wickedly to defraud them of the blessing of their God or to accuse and scoff at the Holy Spirit for having published what it is in any way profitable to suppress.

... let everyone regard himself as the steward of God in all things which he possesses.

No one has rightly denied himself unless he has wholly resigned himself to the Lord and is willing to leave every detail to his good pleasure. If we put ourselves in such a frame of mind, then, whatever may happen to us, we shall never feel miserable or accuse God falsely because of our lot.

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.

Let us consider this settled, that no one has made progress in the school of Christ who does not joyfully await the day of death and final resurrection.

Faith is the evidence of divine adoption.

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.

Whoever shall now contend that it is unjust to put heretics and blasphemers to death will knowingly and willingly incur their very guilt.

Let this be our rule for goodwill and helpfulness, that whenever we are able to assist others we should behave as stewards who must someday give an account of ourselves.

All truth is God's truth.

There are babies a span long in hell.