Inspirational Quotes by John Calvin
“First of all, then, in striving for either convenience or tranquility in this present life, Scripture calls us to resign our wills and everything that is our to the Lord, and to turn the affections of our hearts over to Him to be tamed and bridled.”
“The proper use, then, of all the good gifts we have received is the free and generous sharing of those gifts with others. No”
“For he has this comfort, which provides greater security to him than the highest peak of wealth or power— he knows that his affairs are ordered by the Lord and, as such, promote his salvation. We see this sentiment in David, who, while following God and entrusting himself to God’s rule, declared: “I do not occupy myself with things too great and marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother” (Ps. 131:1–2).”
“But many today look for a loophole so they can excuse the excessive desire of the flesh in using external things. Meanwhile, they wish to pave a way for self-indulgence. And so, they take as fact what I won’t concede—that freedom in using external things shouldn’t be restrained in any measure, and that it should be left to each man’s conscience to make use of externalities as he sees fit. I admit, for my part, that consciences neither can nor should be bound by fixed and precise statutes in these matters. But since Scripture gives us general rules for the proper use of external things, we should certainly restrain ourselves according to those rules.”
“Thus our arrogance grows as we seek to exalt ourselves above others, as if we were different from them. Truly, there’s no one who does not flippantly and boldly disregard and despise others as inferiors. Yes,”
“Truly, there’s no one who does not flippantly and boldly disregard and despise others as inferiors.”
“Believers are also trained in obedience by means of the cross. For thus they are taught to live according to God's will rather than their own. If everything went according to their own plans, they would never know what it means to follow God.”
“The distinction of what is called dulia and latria was invented for the very purpose of permitting divine honours to be paid to angels and dead men with apparent impunity. For it is plain that the worship which Papists pay to saints differs in no respect from the worship of God: for this worship is paid without distinction; only when they are pressed they have recourse to the evasion, that what belongs to God is kept unimpaired, because they leave him λατρια. But since the question relates not to the word, but the thing, how can they be allowed to sport at will with a matter of the highest moment? But not to insist on this, the utmost they will obtain by their distinction is, that they give worship to God, and service to the others. For λατρεὶα in Greek has the same meaning as worship in Latin; whereas δουλεὶα properly means service, though the words are sometimes used in Scripture indiscriminately. But granting that the distinction is invariably preserved, the thing to be inquired into is the meaning of each. Δουλεὶα unquestionably means service, and λατρεὶα worship. But no man doubts that to serve is something higher than to worship. For it were often a hard thing to serve him whom you would not refuse to reverence. It is, therefore, an unjust division to assign the greater to the saints and leave the less to God. But several of the ancient fathers observed this distinction. What if they did, when all men see that it is not only improper, but utterly frivolous?”
“were we ordered to make a temple of wood and stone to the Spirit, inasmuch as such worship is due to God alone, it would be a clear proof of the Spirit’s divinity; how much clearer a proof in that we are not to make a temple to him, but to be ourselves that temple.”
“For though in old times there were some, and in the present day not a few are found, who deny the being of a God, yet, whether they will or not, they occasionally feel the truth which they are desirous not to know. We do not read of any man who broke out into more unbridled and audacious contempt of the Deity than C. Caligula, and yet none showed greater dread when any indication of divine wrath was manifested.”
“he refers rather to their adoption because God’s grace is the more striking when he out of all mankind chooses some few to be his own people.”
“God was pleased to indicate and typify both the gift of future and eternal felicity by terrestrial blessings, as well as the dreadful nature of spiritual death by bodily punishments, at that time when he delivered his covenant to the Israelites as under a kind of veil.”
“The knowledge of ourselves, therefore, is not only an incitement to seek after God, but likewise a considerable assistance towards finding him.”
“Assuredly, when the word of God is despised, all reverence for Him is gone. His majesty cannot be duly honoured among us, nor his worship maintained in its integrity, unless we hang as it were upon his lips.”
“The nature of pure and genuine religion…consists in faith, united with a serious fear of God, comprehending a voluntary reverence, and producing legitimate worship agreeable to the injunctions of the law.”
topics: religion
“Even the wicked themselves, therefore, are an example of the fact that some idea of God always exists in every human mind.”
“The worship of God is…the only thing which renders men superior to brutes, and makes them aspire to immortality.”
“Mingled vanity and pride appear in this, that whenmiserable men do seek after God, instead of ascending higher thanthemselves as they ought to do, they measure him by their own carnalstupidity, and neglecting solid inquiry, fly off to indulge theircuriosity in vain speculation. Hence, they do not conceive of him inthe character in which he is manifested, but imagine him to bewhatever their own rashness has devised. This abyss standing open,they cannot move one footstep without rushing headlong todestruction. With such an idea of God, nothing which they mayattempt to offer in the way of worship or obedience can have anyvalue in his sight, because it is not him they worship, but, insteadof him, the dream and figment of their own heart. This corruptprocedure is admirably described by Paul, when he says, that"thinking”
“For very few persons are concerned about the way that leads to heaven, but all are anxious to know, before the time, what passes there.”
“For the truth of God is sufficiently solid and certain in itself, and can receive no better confirmation from any other quarter than from itself; but our faith being slender and weak, unless it be supported on every side, and sustained by every assistance, immediately shakes, fluctuates, totters, and falls.”
topics: spiritual-fortitude
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John Calvin (1509 - 1584)
Was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530. After religious tensions provoked a violent uprising against Protestants in France, Calvin fled to Basel, Switzerland, where he published the first edition of his seminal work The Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536.Calvin's writing and preachings provided the seeds for the branch of theology that bears his name. The Reformed, Congregational, and Presbyterian churches, which look to Calvin as the chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world.
John Calvin was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530. After religious tensions provoked a violent uprising against Protestants in France, Calvin fled to Basel, Switzerland, where in 1536 he published the first edition of his seminal work Institutes of the Christian Religion.
Calvin's writing and preaching provided the seeds for the branch of theology that bears his name. The Presbyterian and other Reformed churches, which look to Calvin as a chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world. Calvin's thought exerted considerable influence over major religious figures and entire religious movements, such as Puritanism, and some have argued that his ideas have contributed to the rise of capitalism, individualism, and representative democracy in the West.
Founder of Calvinism. John Calvin, a French scholar who became a leading preacher and dominant force in the Reformation of the 16th Century, studied at the University of Paris and at the University of Orleans. He became dissatisfied with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and allied himself with the cause of the Protestant Reformation in 1532.
When the king of France decided to settle the religious question in his country in favor of the Catholics, Calvin fled to Geneva, Switzerland, where his writings and lectures made Geneva the Rome of Protestantism. His institutes of the Christian religion became the basis for the Presbyterian way of thought and church life. Calvinism is the main doctrine of the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches.