John Calvin: Man

John Calvin was French Protestant reformer. Explore interesting quotes on man.
John Calvin: 322   quotes 20   likes

“If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house, then in a field,… it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light.”

John Calvin
Light , Housing

“… a man will be justified by faith when, excluded from righteousness of works, he by faith lays hold of the righteousness of Christ, and clothed in it, appears in the sight of God not as a sinner, but as righteous…”

John Calvin
God , Faith , Appearance , Christ

“If we cover and obliterate man’s faults and consider the beauty and dignity of God’s image in him, then we shall be induced to love and embrace him (Heb 12:16; Gal 6:10; Isa 58:7; Matt 5:44; Luke 17:3-4)”

John Calvin

Page 38.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)
Source: Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 Vols

Love , God , Beauty

“For there have been some people, otherwise good and holy, who saw that intemperance and luxury time and again drive man to throw off all restraints unless he is curbed by the utmost severity. And in their desire to correct such a pernicious evil they have adopted the only method which they saw fit, namely to permit earthly blessings only insofar as they were an absolute necessity. This advice showed the best of intentions but was far too rigid. For they committed the very dangerous error of imposing on the consequence of others stricter rules than those laid down in the Word of the Lord. By restricting people within the demands of necessity, they meant abstinence from everything possible. On the other hand, there are many nowadays who seek a pretext to excuse intemperance in the use of the external things, and who desire to indulge the lusts of the flesh. Such people take for granted that liberty should not be restricted by any limitations at all; but to this we can never agree. We must grant, indeed, that it is not right or possible to bind the consciences of others with hard and fast rules.”

John Calvin

Page 85.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

People , Error , Evil , Time

“It is certain that no man can embrace the grace of the Gospel without retaking himself from the errors of his former life into the right path, and making it his whole study to practice repentance.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 3, Chapter 3, Section 1, p. 497
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

Life , Error , Study

“The Lord commands us to do good unto all men without exception, though the majority are very undeserving when judged according to their own merits. But scripture here helps us out with an excellent argument when it teaches us that we must not think of man’s real value, but only of his creation in the image of God to which we owe all possible honor and love.”

John Calvin

Page 37.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

Love , Men , God , Thinking

“Our feeling of ignorance, vanity, want, weakness, in short, depravity and corruption, reminds us … that in the Lord, and none but He, dwell the true light of wisdom, solid virtue, exuberant goodness. We are accordingly urged by our own evil things to consider the good things of God; and, indeed, we cannot aspire to Him in earnest until we have begun to be displeased with ourselves. For what man is not disposed to rest in himself? Who, in fact, does not thus rest, so long as he is unknown to himself; that is, so long as he is contented with his own endowments, and unconscious or unmindful of his misery? Every person, therefore, on coming to the knowledge of himself, is not only urged to seek God, but is also led as by the hand to find him.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 1, Chapter 1, p. 44
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

Wisdom , God , Feeling , Knowledge

“Moreover, in order that we may be aroused and exhorted all the more to carry this out, Scripture makes known that there are not one, not two, nor a few foes, but great armies, which wage war against us. For Mary Magdalene is said to have been freed from seven demons by which she was possessed [Mark 16:9; Luke 8:2], and Christ bears witness that usually after a demon has once been cast out, if you make room for him again, he will take with him seven spirits more wicked than he and return to his empty possession [Matt. 12:43-45]. Indeed, a whole legion is said to have assailed one man [Luke 8:30]. We are therefore taught by these examples that we have to wage war against an infinite number of enemies, lest, despising their fewness, we should be too remiss to give battle, or, thinking that we are sometimes afforded some respite, we should yield to idleness.
But the frequent mention of Satan or the devil in the singular denotes the empire of wickness opposed to the Kingdom of Righteousness. For as the church and fellowship of the saints has Christ as Head, so the faction of the impious and impiety itself are depicted for us together with their prince who holds supreme sway over them. For this reason, it was said: "Depart, …you cursed, into the eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angels"”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Matt. 25:41
“Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion” https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1611644453 Book 1, ch.14, sect. 14, edited by John T. McNeill pp.173-174.
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

War , Angels , Thinking , Christ

“Now among the other things proper to recreate man and give him pleasure, music is either the first or one of the principal; and we must think that it is a gift of God deputed for that purpose.”

John Calvin

Introduction, Geneva Psalter 1539.

God , Pleasure , Music , Thinking

“We condemn those who affirm that a man once justified cannot sin. … As to the special privilege of the Virgin Mary, when they produce the celestial diploma we shall believe what they say.”

John Calvin

John Calvin, Antidote to the Canons of the Council of Trent, Canon 23. (1547)

“[Elizabeth] calls Mary the mother of her Lord. This denotes a unity of person in the two natures of Christ; as if she had said, that he who was begotten a mortal man in the womb of Mary is, at the same time, the eternal God…. This name Lord strictly belongs to the Son of God 'manifested in the flesh,' (1 Timothy 3:16,) who has received from the Father all power, and has been appointed the highest ruler of heaven and earth, that by his agency God may govern all things.”

John Calvin

John Calvin. "Commentary on Luke 1:43". Harmony of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. 1. Retrieved 2009-01-07.
Harmony of Matthew, Mark, Luke

God , Nature , Time , Christ

“The apostle denies that anyone actually knows Christ, who has not learned to put off the old man, corrupt with deceitful lusts, and to put on Christ.”

John Calvin

Page 20.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

Learning , Christ

“There is deliverance in store only for the man who gives up his selfishness, and whose sole aim is to please the Lord and to do what is right in his sight.”

John Calvin

Page 29.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

Selfishness

“We should forever keep in mind that we must not brood on the wickedness of man, but realize that he is God’s image bearer.”

John Calvin

Page 38.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

God

“Man doubtless has been made subject to vanity—man here been reduced to nothing—man is nothing. And yet how is he whom God exalts utterly nothing? How is he nothing to whom a divine heart has been given? Let us breathe again, brethren. Although we are nothing in our hearts, perhaps something of us may lurk in the heart of God.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 3, Chapter 2, Section 25, p. 479
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

God , Heart

“The worship of images is intimately connected with that of the saints. They were rejected by the primitive Christians; but St Irenæus, who lived in the second century, relates that there was a sect of heretics, the Carpocratians, who worshipped, in the manner of Pagans, different images representing Jesus Christ, St Paul, and others. The Gnostics had also images; but the church rejected their use in a positive manner, and a Christian writer of the third century, Minutius Felix, says that “the Pagans reproached the Christians for having neither temples nor simulachres;” and I could quote many other evidences that the primitive Christians entertained a great horror against every kind of images, considering them as the work of demons. It appears, however, that the use of pictures was creeping into the church already in the third century, because the council of Elvira in Spain, held in 305, especially forbids to have any picture in the Christian churches. These pictures were generally representations of some events, either of the New 5 In his Treatise given below. 11 or of the Old Testament, and their object was to instruct the common and illiterate people in sacred history, whilst others were emblems, representing some ideas connected with the doctrines [008] of Christianity. It was certainly a powerful means of producing an impression upon the senses and the imagination of the vulgar, who believe without reasoning, and admit without reflection; it was also the most easy way of converting rude and ignorant nations, because, looking constantly on the representations of some fact, people usually end by believing it. This iconographic teaching was, therefore, recommended by the rulers of the church, as being useful to the ignorant, who had only the understanding of eyes, and could not read writings.6 Such a practice was, however, fraught with the greatest danger, as experience has but too much proved. It was replacing intellect by sight.7 Instead of elevating man towards God, it was bringing down the Deity to the level of his finite intellect, and it could not but powerfully contribute to the rapid spread of a pagan anthropomorphism in the church.”

John Calvin

Source: A Treatise of Relics (1543), p. 10-11

God , People , Way , Quotes

“The voluntary spilling of semen outside of intercourse between man and woman is a monstrous thing. Deliberately to withdraw from coitus in order that semen may fall on the ground is doubly monstrous. For this is to extinguish the hope of the race and to kill before he is born the hoped-for offspring.”

John Calvin

Commentary on Genesis, Genesis 38:8-10, (1554)
Genesis (1554)

Hope