Top 350 John Calvin Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “We must resist wandering thoughts in prayer. Raising our hands reminds us that we need to raise up our minds to God, setting aside all irrelevant thoughts.”

— John Calvin

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

— John Calvin

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

— John Calvin

54. “We are surrounded by God’s benefits. The best use of these benefits is an unceasing expression of gratitude.”

— John Calvin

55. “Joy is a quiet gladness of heart as one contemplates the goodness of God’s saving grace in Christ Jesus.”

— John Calvin

56. “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

57. “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

58. “Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.”

— John Calvin

59. “Holiness is not a merit by which we can attain communion with God, but a gift of Christ, which enables us to cling to him, and to follow him.”

— John Calvin

60. “True faith is ever connected with hope.”

— John Calvin

61. “Lawful worship consists in obedience alone.”

— John Calvin

62. “We may rest assured that God would never have suffered any infants to be slain except those who were already damned and predestined for eternal death.”

— John Calvin

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

— John Calvin

64. “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

65. “Faith and patience are exceptional virtues in those that suffer. Patience is the fruit and evidence of faith.”

— John Calvin

66. “We cannot rely on God’s promises without obeying his commandments.”

— John Calvin

67. “Free will is an empty term.”

— John Calvin

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

— John Calvin

69. “Faith does not proceed from ourselves, but is the fruit of spiritual regeneration.”

— John Calvin

70. “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.”

— John Calvin

71. “There is nothing in afflictions which ought to disturb our joy.”

— John Calvin

72. “God orders what we cannot do, that we may know what we ought to ask him.”

— John Calvin

73. “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

74. “When pain and suffering strike, our faith is well founded if it is standing on the promises of God. For all of God’s promises have strong confirmation in Christ.”

— John Calvin

75. “By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which He determined with Himself whatever He wished to happen with regard to every man.”

— John Calvin

76. “Our hearts are enfeebled by PROSPERITY so that we cannot make an effort to pray.”

— John Calvin

77. “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

78. “The world was no doubt made, that it might be a theatre of the divine glory.”

— John Calvin

79. “There is no work, however vile or sordid, that does not glisten before God.”

— John Calvin

80. “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

81. “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.”

— John Calvin

82. “Without the fear of God, men do not even observe justice and charity among themselves.”

— John Calvin

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

— John Calvin

84. “We must observe that the knowledge of God which we are invited to cultivate is not that which, resting satisfied with empty speculation, only flutters in the brain, but a knowledge which will prove substantial and fruitful whenever it is duly perceived and rooted in the heart.”

— John Calvin

85. “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

86. “The poor yield to the rich, the common people to the upper ten, the servants to their masters, the ignorant to the scholars; but there is nobody who does not imagine that he is really better than others.”

— John Calvin

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

— John Calvin

88. “But, as sculpture and painting are gifts of God, what I insist on is, that both shall be used purely and lawfully, that gifts which the Lord has bestowed upon us, for His glory and our good, shall not be preposterously abused, nay, shall not be perverted to our destruction.”

— John Calvin

89. “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

90. “A soul, therefore, when deprived of the Word of God, is given up unarmed to the devil for destruction.”

— John Calvin

91. “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

92. “The grace of God has no charms for men till the Holy Spirit gives them a taste for it.”

— John Calvin

93. “The word “hope” I take for faith; and indeed hope is nothing else but the constancy of faith.”

— John Calvin

94. “Peace and friendship are an amiable thing among men. They be so indeed, and we ought to seek them to the uttermost of our power. But yet for all that, we must set such store by God’s truth, that if all the world should be set on fire for the maintenance thereof, we should not stick at it.”

— John Calvin

95. “It is certain that not one drop of rain falls without God’s sure command.”

— John Calvin

96. “I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels.”

— John Calvin

97. “This is what entertainment is all about- idiots, explosives and falling anvils.”

— John Calvin

98. “Free will does not enable any man to perform good works, unless he is assisted by grace; indeed, the special grace which the elect alone receive through regeneration. For I stay not to consider the extravagance of those who say that grace is offered equally and promiscuously to all.”

— John Calvin

99. “Because I know that I am not my own master, I offer my heart as a true sacrifice to the Lord.”

— John Calvin

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

— John Calvin