Inspirational Quotes by John Calvin
“Many falsely suppose that the feelings, which God has implanted in us as natural, proceed only from a defect. Accordingly the perfecting of believers does not depend on their casting off all feelings, but on their yielding to them and controlling them, only for proper reason.”
topics: Feelings
“As idle talk is often concealed under the garb of jesting, and wit, the Apostle Paul expressly condemns pleasantry, which is so agreeable as to seem a praiseworthy virtue, as a part of foolish talking.”
topics: Foolishness
“God cannot be comprehended by us, except as far as he accommodates himself to our standard.”
topics: God
“Nobody seriously believes the universe was made by God without being persuaded that He takes care of His works.”
topics: God
“It is beyond dispute that some awareness of God exists in the human mind by natural instinct, since God Himself has given everyone some idea of Him so that no one can plead ignorance.”
topics: God
“Men cannot open their eyes without being compelled to see Him [and] wherever you cast your eyes, there is no spot in the universe wherein you cannot discern at least some sparks of His glory.”
topics: 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.”
topics: Good and Evil
“I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels.”
topics: Gossip
“It is a sign of a perverse and treacherous disposition to wound the good name of another, when he has no opportunity of defending himself.”
topics: Gossip
“If we believe heaven to be our country, it is better for us to transmit our wealth thither, than to retain it here, where we may lose it by a sudden removal.”
“As Christ is the end of the Law and the Gospel and has within Himself all the treasures of wisdom and understanding, so also is He the mark at which all heretics aim and direct their arrows.”
topics: Heresy
“There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence.”
“The word hope I take for faith; and indeed hope is nothing else but the constancy of faith.”
“Man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's majesty.”
topics: Humility
“They who prematurely put themselves forward to root out whatever is displeasing to them overthrow the judgment of God and rashly intrude upon the office of angels.”
topics: Hypocrisy
“Hypocrisy can plunge the mind of a man into a dark abyss, when he believes his own self-flattery instead of God's verdict.”
“The human heart has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood lurks, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself.”
topics: Hypocrisy
“The one who judges according to the word and law of the Lord, and forms his judgments by the rule of charity, always begins with subjecting himself to examination, and preserves a proper medium and order in his judgments.”
topics: Judging
“It is entirely by the intervention of Christ's righteousness that we obtain justification before God. This is equivalent to saying that man is not just in himself, but that the righteousness of Christ is communicated to him by imputation, while he is strictly deserving of punishment.”
topics: Justification
“Justification is the main hinge on which salvation turns.”
topics: Justification
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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.