Top 350 John Calvin Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Indeed, the holiest among us know they stand by God’s grace and not by their own virtues. Yet they would nevertheless become too confident in their own courage and constancy if they weren’t led to a more intimate knowledge of themselves by the testing of the cross.”

— John Calvin

302. “Scripture is also called gospel, that is, new and joyful news, because in it is declared that Christ, the sole true and eternal Son of the living God, was made man, to make us children of God his Father, by adoption. Thus.”

— John Calvin

303. “God neither wills nor decrees anything without having long before directed it to its proper end. People.”

— John Calvin

304. “Since he has so chosen us, we belong to him, more especially because he has bought us by the blood of his Son.”

— John Calvin

305. “Whensoever God’s truth is defaced or when any man turns away from the pure simplicity of the Gospel, we must not in any wise spare him, but although the whole world should set itself against us, yet must we maintain the case with invincible constancy, without bending for any creature.”

— John Calvin

306. “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

307. “It is a beastly business when people start eating without prayer, and when they are full, they run out without as much as mentioning God’s name.”

— John Calvin

308. “Scripture urges and warns us that whatever favors we may have obtained from the Lord, we have received them as a trust on condition that they should be applied to the common benefit of the church.”

— John Calvin

309. “We unlearn the art of speaking well when we cease to speak with God.”

— John Calvin

310. “Christ is known rightly nowhere but in Scripture. If.”

— John Calvin

311. “We are nowhere forbidden to laugh.”

— John Calvin

312. “All things being at God’s disposal, and the decision of salvation or death belonging to him, he orders all things by his counsel and decree in such a manner, that some men are born devoted from the womb to certain death, that his name may be glorified in their destruction.”

— John Calvin

313. “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

314. “No man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone.”

— John Calvin

315. “The Lord has not redeemed you so you might enjoy pleasures and luxuries or so that you might abandon yourself to ease and indolence, but rather so you should be prepared to endure all sorts of evils.”

— John Calvin

316. “To be Christians under the law of grace does not mean to wander unbridled outside the law, but to be engrafted in Christ, by whose grace we are free from the curse of the law, and by whose Spirit we have the law engraved upon our hearts.”

— John Calvin

317. “In truth we know by experience that song has great force and vigour to move and inflame the hearts of men to invoke and praise God with a more vehement and ardent zeal.”

— John Calvin

318. “Again I ask whence it happened that the fall of Adam involved, without remedy, in eternal death so many nations, together with their infant children, except because it so seemed good to God? A decree horrible, I confess, and yet true.”

— John Calvin

319. “I don’t need to compromise my principles, because they don’t have the slightest bearing on what happens to me anyway.”

— John Calvin

320. “Satan, who is a wonderful contriver of delusions, is constantly laying snares to entrap ignorant and heedless people.”

— John Calvin

321. “The flesh is willing to flatter itself, and many who now give themselves every indulgence, promise to themselves an easy entrance into life. THus men practice mutual deception on each other and fall asleep in wicked indifference.”

— John Calvin

322. “Our physical illnesses serve us for medicines to purge us from worldly affections and retrench what is superfluous in us, and since they are to us the messengers of death, we ought to learn to have one foot raised to take our departure when it shall please God.”

— John Calvin

323. “Things that are seen are temporal; things that are unseen are eternal.”

— John Calvin

324. “Faith is tossed about by various doubts, so that the minds of the godly are rarely at peace.”

— John Calvin

325. “A man that extols himself is a fool and an idiot.”

— John Calvin

326. “Doubtful prayer is no prayer at all.”

— John Calvin

327. “Tears that are shed in time of affliction are rarely tears of penitence, but more likely they are shed out of self pity and pain or sorrow.”

— John Calvin

328. “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

329. “Hero-worship is innate to human nature, and it is founded on some of our noblest feelings, – gratitude, love, and admiration. – but which, like all other feelings, when uncontrolled by principle and reason, may easily degenerate into the wildest exaggerations, and lead to most dangerous consequences.”

— John Calvin

330. “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

331. “Everyone flatters himself and carries a kingdom in his breast.”

— John Calvin

332. “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

333. “No man can come to God but by an extraordinary revelation of the Spirit.”

— John Calvin

334. “Let us fall before the majesty of our great God, acknowledging our faults, and praying that he will make us ever more conscious of them.”

— John Calvin

335. “Accursed is that peace of which revolt from God is the bond, and blessed are those contentions by which it is necessary to maintain the kingdom of Christ.”

— John Calvin

336. “We are not to look to what men in themselves deserve but to attend to the image of God which exists in all and to which we owe all honor and love.”

— John Calvin

337. “There is no wisdom but that which is focused on the fear of God.”

— John Calvin

338. “There is no erratic power or action or motion in creatures but they are governed by God’s secret plan in such a way that nothing happens except what is knowingly and willingly decreed by Him.”

— John Calvin

339. “When we come to a comparison of heaven and earth, then we may indeed not only forget all about the present life, but even despise and scorn it.”

— John Calvin

340. “Unless we ardently and prayerfully devote ourselves to Christ’s righteousness we do not only faithlessly revolt from our Creator, but we also abjure him as our Savior.”

— John Calvin

341. “Prosperity inebriates men, so that they take delights in their own merits.”

— John Calvin

342. “It is a very important consideration that we are consecrated and dedicated to God; it means that we may think, speak, meditate, or do anything only with a view to his glory.”

— John Calvin

343. “Moreover, a true Christian will not ascribe any prosperity to his own diligence, industry, or good fortune, but he will acknowledge that God is the author of it.”

— John Calvin

344. “To search for wisdom apart from Christ means not simply foolhardiness but utter insanity.”

— John Calvin

345. “It is only the goodness of God sensibly experienced by us which opens our mouth to celebrate His praise.”

— John Calvin

346. “Each eye can have its vision separately; but when we are looking at anything our vision, which in itself is divided, joins up and unites in order to give itself as a whole to the object that is put before it.”

— John Calvin

347. “When we recognize the rod of a father, should we not show ourselves docile children rather than rebelliously desperate men who have been hardened in their evil doings?”

— John Calvin

348. “But Jacob was divinely chosen and his brother, the first-born, was rejected.”

— John Calvin

349. “All whom the Lord has chosen and received into the society of his saints ought to prepare themselves for a life that is hard, difficult, laborious and full of countless griefs.”

— John Calvin

350. “If everything proceeded according to their wishes, they would not understand what it means to follow God.”

— John Calvin