“Helvidius has shown himself too ignorant, in saying that Mary had several sons, because mention is made in some passages of the brothers of Christ.”

— John Calvin

Bernard Leeming, "Protestants and Our Lady", Marian Library Studies, January 1967, p.9.

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John Calvin 161

French Protestant reformer 1509–1564

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“In the interpretation of figurative passages, let the following canon be observed. If the passage be preceptive, either forbidding some flagitious deed and some heinous crime, or commanding something useful and beneficent: then such passage is not figurative. But, if the passage seems, either to command some flagitious deed and some heinous crime, or to forbid something useful and beneficent: then such passage is figurative. Thus, for example, Christ says: Unless ye shall eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood; ye shall have no life in you. Now, in these words, he seems to command a heinous crime or a flagitious deed. Therefore the passage is a figure, enjoining us to communicate in the passion of our Lord, and admonishing us to lay it up sweetly and usefully in our memory because, for us, his flesh was crucified and wounded. On the other hand, Scripture says: If thy enemy shall hunger, give him food; if he shall thirst, give him drink.”

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Here, without all doubt, an act of beneficence is enjoined.
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“I do not doubt that there has been some ignorance in their having reproved this mode of speech, — that the Virgin Mary is the Mother of God … I cannot dissemble that it is found to be a bad practice ordinarily to adopt this title in speaking of this Virgin: and, for my part, I cannot consider such language as good, proper, or suitable… for to say, the Mother of God for the Virgin Mary, can only serve to harden the ignorant in their superstitions.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Calvin to the Foreigners’ Church in London, 1552-10-27, in George Cornelius Gorham, Gleanings of a few scattered ears, during the period of Reformation in England and of the times immediately succeeding : A.D. 1533 to A.D. 1588 http://books.google.com/books?vid=0bbTMcT6wXFWRHGP&id=esICAAAAQAAJ&printsec=titlepage&dq=%22george+cornelius+gorham%22 (London: Bell and Daldy, 1857), p. 285.