Institutes of the Christian Religion: The First English Version of the 1541 French Edition

by John Calvin

Now, as even pagans confess, there is no nation so uncivilized, no people so wild, that it does not have imprinted on the heart that there is some god.' Those who seem not to differ from brute beasts in any other aspect of life nevertheless always retain some seed of religion, so that this universal concept has taken root in every spirit and is fixed in every heart. Since from the beginning of the world there has never been a region or city or even a house which could do without religion, we have a tacit confession that there is a sense of divinity engraved in the hearts of all people. Even idolatry gives us ample grounds to think this, for we know how a person abases himself in spite of himself and honors other creatures at his own expense.