John Calvin famous quotes

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

#Inspirational #Spiritual #Nature

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.
-- John Calvin

#Mean #Men #Names

Whatever a person may be like, we must still love them because we love God.
-- John Calvin

#Godly #May #God Love

God does not bestow his spirit on his people in order to set aside the use of his word, but rather to render it fruitful.
-- John Calvin

#Faith #Order #People

The effect of our knowledge rather ought to be, first, to teach us reverence and fear; and, secondly, to induce us, under its guidance and teaching, to ask every good thing from [God], and, when it is received, ascribe it to him. For how can the idea of God enter your mind without instantly giving rise to the thought, that since you are his workmanship, you are bound, by the very law of creation, to submit to his authority?-\-\that your life is due to him?-\-\that whatever you do ought to have reference to him.
-- John Calvin

#Teaching #Law #Ideas

Faith consists not in ignorance, but in knowledge - knowledge not of God merely...but when we recognize God as a propitious Father through the reconciliation made by Christ, and Christ as given to us for righteousness, sanctification, and life.
-- John Calvin

#Father #Ignorance #Christ

We must not think that [God] takes no notice of us, when He does not answer our wishes: for He has a right to distinguish what we actually need.
-- John Calvin

#Prayer #Thinking #Wish

We should ask God to increase our hope when it is small, awaken it when it is dormant, confirm it when it is wavering, strengthen it when it is weak, and raise it up when it is overthrown.
-- John Calvin

#Wavering #Weak #Dormant

Angels are the dispensers and administrators of the divine beneficence toward us.
-- John Calvin

#Angel #Divine #Beneficence

If God does nothing random, there must always be something to learn.
-- John Calvin

#Doe

True faith is ever connected with hope.
-- John Calvin

#Faith #Connected

Our prayer must not be self-centered. It must arise not only because we feel our own need as a burden we must lay upon God, but also because we are so bound up in love for our fellow men that we feel their need as acutely as our own. To make intercession for men is the most powerful and practical way in which we can express our love for them.
-- John Calvin

#Powerful #Prayer #Men

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

#Confidence #Block #Christian Inspirational

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

#Blessing #Wish #Infinite

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.
-- John Calvin

#Christian #Religious #Dog

Whoever is not satisfied with Christ alone, strives after something beyond absolute perfection.
-- John Calvin

#Perfection #Christ #Strive

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

#Brightness #Christ

Humility is the beginning of true intelligence.
-- John Calvin

#Faith #Humility #Christianity

While all men seek after happiness, scarcely one in a hundred looks for it from God.
-- John Calvin

#Men #Looks #Hundred

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

#Mother #Idols #Craftsman

We shall never be clothed with the righteousness of Christ except we first know assuredly that we have no righteousness of our own.
-- John Calvin

#Firsts #Christ #Righteousness

Christ's intercession is the continual application of his death to our salvation.
-- John Calvin

#Christ #Salvation #Application

Peace is not to be purchased by the sacrifice of truth.
-- John Calvin

#Sacrifice

Let it stand, therefore, as an indubitable truth, which no engines can shake, that the mind of man is so entirely alienated from the righteousness of God that he cannot conceive, desire, or design any thing but what is wicked, distorted, foul, impure, and iniquitous; that his heart is so thoroughly envenomed by sin that it can breathe out nothing but corruption and rottenness; that if some men occasionally make a show of goodness, their mind is ever interwoven with hypocrisy and deceit, their soul inwardly bound with the fetters of wickedness.
-- John Calvin

#Heart #Men #Hypocrisy

God works in his elect in two ways: inwardly, by his Spirit; outwardly, by his Word.
-- John Calvin

#Two #Way #Spirit

We are nowhere forbidden to laugh.
-- John Calvin

#Christian #Laughing #Christian Inspirational

We must make the invisible kingdom visible in our midst.
-- John Calvin

#Kingdoms #Invisible #Midst

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

#Soul #Hell #Torture

The pastor ought to have two voices: one, for gathering the sheep; and another, for warding off and driving away wolves and thieves. The Scripture supplies him with the means of doing both.
-- John Calvin

#Mean #Voice #Sheep

Those who fall away have never been thoroughly imbued with the knowledge of Christ but only had a slight and passing taste of it.
-- John Calvin

#Christian #Fall #Taste

It is a most blessed thing to be subject to the sovereignty of God.
-- John Calvin

#Blessed #Sovereignty #Sovereignty Of God

The cross of Christ only triumphs in the breast of believers over the devil and the flesh, sin and sinners, when their eyes are directed to the power of His Resurrection.
-- John Calvin

#Life Changing #Eye #Devil

I gave up all for Christ, and what have I found? Everything in Christ.
-- John Calvin

#Christ #Found #Gave Up

To will is human, to will the bad is of fallen nature, but to will the good is of Grace.
-- John Calvin

#Grace #Fallen #Humans

There is nothing in afflictions which ought to disturb our joy.
-- John Calvin

#Joy #Affliction

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.
-- John Calvin

#Thinking #Rewards #Fit

Doubtful prayer is no prayer at all.
-- John Calvin

#Prayer #Doubtful

When the Bible speaks, God speaks.
-- John Calvin

#Speak

If the gospel be not preached, Jesus Christ is, as it were, buried.
-- John Calvin

#Jesus #Jesus Christ #Christ

The blood of Christ is necessary to purge the faults clinging to our best works.
-- John Calvin

#Blood #Faults #Christ

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

#Men #Support

Prayers will never reach God unless they are founded on free mercy.
-- John Calvin

#Prayer #Mercy

My heart I give you, Lord, eagerly and entirely.
-- John Calvin

#Christian #Heart #Giving

To have a proper understanding of the gospel, we must recognise that we need to lean entirely upon the Lord Jesus Christ and his mercy alone as our only hope of salvation. ... No one can be justified by the law; justification is through faith alone.
-- John Calvin

#Jesus #Law #Understanding

When God designs to forgive us he changes our hearts and turns us to obedience by His Spirit.
-- John Calvin

#Heart #Design #Forgiving

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

#Stupid #Men #Understanding

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

#God #Doe #Glisten

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.
-- John Calvin

#Church #Christianity #Institutions

Our true and genuine wisdom can be summed up as the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves.
-- John Calvin

#Christianity #Genuine

For until men recognize that they owe everything to God, that they are nourished by His fatherly care, that He is the Author of their every good, that they should seek nothing beyond Him - they will never yield Him willing service. Nay, unless they establish their complete happiness in Him, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to Him.
-- John Calvin

#Men #Yield #Giving

It is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God's face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself.
-- John Calvin

#Men #Faces #Firsts

No one can travel so far that he does not make some progess each day. So let us never give up. Then we shall move forward daily in the Lord's way. And let us never despair because of our limited success. Even though it is so much less than we would like, our labour is not wasted when today is better than yesterday!
-- John Calvin

#Perseverance #Giving Up #Moving

For it is better, with closed eyes, to follow God as our guide, than, by relying on our own prudence, to wander through those circuitous paths which it devises for us.
-- John Calvin

#Eye #Path #Guides

The whole gospel is contained in Christ.
-- John Calvin

#Christ

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.
-- John Calvin

#Fear #Sailing #Mind

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.
-- John Calvin

#Communication #Justice #Church

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.
-- John Calvin

#Race #Punishment #Justice

We unjustly defraud God of his right, unless each of us lives and dies in dependence on His sovereign pleasure.
-- John Calvin

#Sovereign #Pleasure

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.
-- John Calvin

#Memories #Heart #Soul

Prayer is the chief exercise of faith.
-- John Calvin

#Prayer #Exercise #Chiefs

True wisdom consists in two things: Knowledge of God and Knowledge of Self.
-- John Calvin

#Self #Two #Self Knowledge

The human heart is a factory of idols...Everyon e of us is, from his mother's womb, expert in inventing idols.
-- John Calvin

#Mother #Heart #Idols

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

#Order #Joy #Suffering

The most accomplished in the Scripture are fools, unless they acknowledge that they have need of God for their schoolmaster all the days of their life.
-- John Calvin

#Needs #Scripture #Fool

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.
-- John Calvin

#Believe #Men #Idols

The subject then of these chapters may be stated thus, - man's only righteousness is through the mercy of God in Christ, which being offered by the Gospel is apprehended by faith.
-- John Calvin

#Faith #Men #May

A perfect faith is nowhere to be found, so it follows that all of us are partly unbelievers.
-- John Calvin

#Perfect #Found

Lawful worship consists in obedience alone.
-- John Calvin

#Worship #Obedience

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.
-- John Calvin

#Easter #School #Progress

For the fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being, and it is a monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man's house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light.
-- John Calvin

#Mother #Men #Light

But a most pernicious error widely prevails that Scripture has only so much weight as is conceded to it by the consent of the church. As if the eternal and inviolable truth of God depended upon the decision of men!
-- John Calvin

#Men #Errors #Decision

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.
-- John Calvin

#Christian #Baby #Children

The human heart has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood works, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself.
-- John Calvin

#Heart #Vanity #Hypocrisy

Man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's majesty.
-- John Calvin

#Men #Majesty #Awareness

I exhort all, who reverence the Word of the Lord, to read it, and diligently imprint it on their memory.
-- John Calvin

#Memories #Lord #Reverence

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

#Church #Faults #Heard

Whomever the Lord has adopted and deemed worthy of His fellowship ought to prepare themselves for a hard, toilsome, and unquiet life, crammed with very many and various kinds of evil.
-- John Calvin

#Evil #Fellowship #Kind

Only those who have learned well to be earnestly dissatisfied with themselves, and to be confounded with shame at their wretchedness truly understand the Christian gospel.
-- John Calvin

#Christian #Shame #Wells

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

#Doe #Looks #Vain

How do we know that God has elected us before the creation of the world? By believing in Jesus Christ.
-- John Calvin

#Jesus #Believe #World

It is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone.
-- John Calvin

#Justify #Not Alone

Faith is tossed about by various doubts, so that the minds of the godly are rarely at peace.
-- John Calvin

#Godly #Doubt #Mind

To make intercession for men is the most powerful and practical way in which we can express our love for them.
-- John Calvin

#Powerful #Men #Our Love

But those who wish to prove to unbelievers that Scripture is the Word of God are acting foolishly, for only by faith can this be known.
-- John Calvin

#Wish #Acting #Scripture

There cannot be a surer rule, nor a stronger exhortation to the observance of it, than when we are taught that all the endowments which we possess are divine deposits entrusted to us for the very purpose of being distributed for the good of our neighbour.
-- John Calvin

#Stronger #Purpose #Taught

Christ is much more powerful to save, than Adam was to destroy.
-- John Calvin

#Powerful #Christ #Adam

Unless God's Word illumine the way, the whole life of men is wrapped in darkness and mist, so that they cannot but miserably stray.
-- John Calvin

#Men #Darkness #Way

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.
-- John Calvin

#Scripture #Christ #Should

Men will never worship God with a sincere heart, or be roused to fear and obey Him with sufficient zeal, until they properly understand how much they are indebted to His mercy.
-- John Calvin

#Heart #Men #Worship

Doctrine is not an affair of the tongue but of the life.
-- John Calvin

#Doctrine #Tongue #Affair

For astronomy is not only pleasant, but also very useful to be known: it cannot be denied that this art unfolds the admirable wisdom of God.
-- John Calvin

#Art #Astronomy #Admirable

No one will calmly and quietly submit to bear the cross except those who have learned to seek their happiness beyond this world.
-- John Calvin

#World #Bears #Crosses

Our assurance, our glory, and the sole anchor of our salvation are that Christ the Son of God is ours, and we in turn are in him sons of God and heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven, called to the hope of eternal blessedness by God's grace, not by our worth.
-- John Calvin

#Son #Anchors #Heaven

Faith consists, not in ignorance, but in knowledge, and that, not only of God, but also of the divine will.
-- John Calvin

#Ignorance #Divine

The excellence of the Church does not consist in multitude but in purity.
-- John Calvin

#Excellence #Church #Doe

The word "hope" I take for faith; and indeed hope is nothing else but the constancy of faith.
-- John Calvin

#Christian #Christian Inspirational #Constancy

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.
-- John Calvin

#Giving #Remembrance #Heaven

The highest honor in the church is not government but service.
-- John Calvin

#Christian #Government #Honor

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.
-- John Calvin

#Trust #Christian #Prayer

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.
-- John Calvin

#Prayer #Ignorance #Would Be