Since no man is excluded from calling upon God the gate of salvation is open to all. There is nothing else to hinder us from entering, but our own unbelief.
– John Calvin
Salvation | Unbelief
The word hope I take for faith; and indeed hope is nothing else but the constancy of faith.
– John Calvin
Hope | Faith
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
Whatever a person may be like, we must still love them because we love God.
– John Calvin
Love
However many blessings we expect from God, His infinite liberality will always exceed all our wishes and our thoughts.
– John Calvin
Blessings | Liberty
Against the persecution of a tyrant the godly have no remedy but prayer.
– John Calvin
Persecution | Prayer
We must make the invisible kingdom visible in our midst.
– John Calvin
Examples
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
Apathy | Animals
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
Brokenness | Humility | The Gospel
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 | Blessings
For men have no taste for (God’s power) till they are convinced of their need of it and they immediately forget its value unless they are conditionally reminded by awareness of their own weakness.
– John Calvin
Weakness
Those who disrupt the body of Christ and split its unity into schisms are quite excluded from the hope of salvation, so long as they remain in dissidence of this kind.
– John Calvin
Unity
Every one of us is, even from his mother’s womb, a master craftsman of idols.
– John Calvin
Rebellion | Idolatry
Justification is the main hinge on which salvation turns.
– John Calvin
Justification
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
Reasoning | Idolatry
The fanaticism which discards the Scripture, under the pretense of resorting to immediate revelations is subversive of every principle of Christianity. For when they boast extravagantly of the Spirit, the tendency is always to bury the Word of God so they may make room for their own falsehoods.
– John Calvin
Scripture | Heresy
There is no work, however vile or sordid, that does not glisten before God.
– John Calvin
Service | Work
Faith is a knowledge of the benevolence of God toward us, and a certain persuasion of His veracity.
– John Calvin
Faith | Blessings
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
Backsliding
Christ is much more powerful to save, than Adam was to destroy.
– John Calvin
Salvation
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.
– John Calvin
Theology | Philosophy
There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence.
– John Calvin
The Holy Spirit | Self-confidence
Knowledge of the sciences is so much smoke apart from the heavenly science of Christ.
– John Calvin
Education | Ignorance
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
Suffering | Fellowship
The Lord has given us a table at which to feast, not an altar on which a victim is to be offered; He has not consecrated priests to make sacrifice, but servants to distribute the sacred feast.
– John Calvin
Blessings | Service
The external observance of the Sabbath rest is a Jewish ceremonial ordinance and no longer binding on Christians. Sabbatarians surpass the Jews three times over in a crass and carnal Sabbatarian superstition.
– John Calvin
Rest
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
Prayer | Intercession
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.
– John Calvin
Heresy
Let us know, then, that the true meaning of Scripture is the natural and obvious meaning; and let us embrace and abide by it resolutely. Let us not only neglect as doubtful, but boldly set aside as deadly corruptions those pretended expositions which lead us away from the natural meaning.
– John Calvin
Scripture | Heresy
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
Blessings | Service
I have not so great a struggle with my vices, great and numerous as they are, as I have with my impatience. My efforts are not absolutely useless; yet I have never been able to conquer this ferocious wild beast.
– John Calvin
Character | Struggles | Impatience
I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels.
– John Calvin
Gossip
Faith…is a steady and certain knowledge of the Divine benevolence towards us, which being founded on the truth of the gratuitous promise in Christ, is both revealed to our minds, and confirmed to our hearts, by the Holy Spirit.
– John Calvin
Faith | The Holy Spirit
Hypocrisy can plunge the mind of a man into a dark abyss, when he believes his own self-flattery instead of God’s verdict.
– John Calvin
Hypocrisy | Self-esteem
Whether or not each believer has a single angel assigned to him for his defense, I dare not positively affirm.
– John Calvin
Angels
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.
– John Calvin
Judging
Faith consists, not in ignorance, but in knowledge, and that, not only of God, but also of the divine will.
– John Calvin
Faith | Knowledge
You must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the completion of joy.
– John Calvin
Suffering | Joy
For where love is wanting, the beauty of all virtue is mere tinsel, is empty sound, is not worth a straw, nay more, is offensive and disgusting.
– John Calvin
Love
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.
– John Calvin
Feelings
Whenever God reproves us, not only in words, but in reality, and reminds us of our sins, we do not so suffer for one fault as to be free for the future, but that until we from the heart repent, He ever sounds in our ears these words, Still God will contend with you: and a real contention is meant.
– John Calvin
Conviction
All our words ought to be filled with true sweetness and grace; and this will be so if we mingle the useful with the sweet.
– John Calvin
Character
We should therefore learn that the only good we have is what the Lord has given us gratuitously; that the only good we do is what He does in us; that it is not that we do nothing ourselves, but that we act only when we have been acted upon, in other words under the direction and influence of the Holy Spirit.
– John Calvin
Blessings
Therefore the Christian heart, since it has been thoroughly persuaded that all things happen by God’s plan, and that nothing takes place by chance, will ever look to him as the principal causes of things, yet will give attention to the secondary causes in their proper place.
– John Calvin
Faith | God | The Heart
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
Service
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
Resurrection
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 neighbor.
– John Calvin
Charity
Lawful worship consists in obedience alone.
– John Calvin
Worship | Obedience
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.
– John Calvin
Hypocrisy
There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.
– John Calvin
Praise
I can say as to myself, that I have been assailed on all sides, and have scarcely been able to enjoy repose for a single moment, but have always had to sustain some conflict either from enemies without or within the church.
– John Calvin
Church
In the maxims of the law, God is seen as the rewarder of perfect righteousness and the avenger of sin. But in Christ, His face shines out, full of grace and gentleness to poor, unworthy sinners.
– John Calvin
Christ | Grace | Rewards
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.
– John Calvin
God
Repentance is the true turning of our life to God, a turning that arises from a pure and earnest fear of Him; and it consists in the mortification of the flesh and the renewing of the Spirit.
– John Calvin
Repentance
The answer of our prayers is secured by the fact that in rejecting them God would in a certain sense deny His own nature.
– John Calvin
Prayer
Let’s get rid of the inhuman philosophy which only allows necessities. Not only does it wrongly deprive us of legitimate enjoyment of God’s generosity, but it cannot be affected without depriving man of all his senses, reducing him to a block.
– John Calvin
Philosophy
Thou, Lord, bruisest me, but I am abundantly satisfied, since it is from Thy hand.
– John Calvin
Suffering
There is no inconsistency in saying that God rewards good works, provided we understand that nevertheless men obtain eternal life gratuitously.
– John Calvin
Eternal Life | Rewards
Children, obey. Why does the apostle use the word obey instead of honor, which has a greater extent of meaning? It is because obedience is the evidence of that honor which children owe to their parents, and is therefore more earnestly enforced.
– John Calvin
Children | Obedience
Original sin may be defined as the hereditary corruption and depravity of our nature. This reaches every part of the soul, makes us abhorrent to God’s wrath and produces in us what Scripture calls works of the flesh.
– John Calvin
Sin | Depravity
No one knows the one-hundredth part of the sin that clings to his soul.
– John Calvin
Sin
The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.
– John Calvin
Conscience
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
Preaching | Church
The moment any mention is made of Christian liberty lust begins to boil, or insane commotions arise, if a speedy restraint is not laid on those licentious spirits by whom the best things are perverted into the worst.
– John Calvin
Liberty
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.
– John Calvin
Heaven | Wealth
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.
– John Calvin
Foolishness
Can true repentance exist without faith? By no means. But although they cannot be separated, they ought to be distinguished.
– John Calvin
Repentance
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.
– John Calvin
Gossip
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.
– John Calvin
Justification
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.
– John Calvin
God
God cannot be comprehended by us, except as far as he accommodates himself to our standard.
– John Calvin
God
Now, in order that true religion may shine upon us, we ought to hold that it must take its beginning from heavenly doctrine and that no one can get even the slightest taste of right and sound doctrine unless he be a pupil of Scripture.
– John Calvin
Doctrine | Scripture
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.
– John Calvin
Good and Evil
Nobody seriously believes the universe was made by God without being persuaded that He takes care of His works.
– John Calvin
God
Nothing is more dangerous than to be blinded by prosperity.
– John Calvin
Prosperity
Doubtful prayer is no prayer at all.
– John Calvin
Prayer
We must remember that Satan has his miracles, too.
– John Calvin
Miracles | Satan
Is it faith to understand nothing, and merely submit your convictions implicitly to the Church?
– John Calvin
Faith
Yet consider now, whether women are not quite past sense and reason, when they want to rule over men.
– John Calvin
Rebellion | Women
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
Scripture
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.
– John Calvin
Rebellion
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
Scripture
When Christ returned to heaven, He withdrew His physical presence from our sight. He didn’t stop being with the disciples but by the ascension fulfilled His promise to be with us to the end of the world. As His body was raised to heaven, so His power and reign have spread to the uttermost parts.
– John Calvin
Comfort
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
Mercy | Prayer | Freedom
Prosperity inebriates men, so that they take delights in their own merits.
– John Calvin
Prosperity
To know God as the Master and Bestower of all good things, who invites us to request them of Him, and still not go to Him and ask of Him – this would be of as little profit as for a man to neglect a treasure, buried and hidden in the earth, after it had been pointed out to him.
– John Calvin
Providence
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.
– John Calvin
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
Humility