Institutes of the Christian Religion (2 Volume Set)

by John Calvin

We, indeed, are perfectly conscious how poor and abject we are: in the presence of God we are miserable sinners, and in the sight of men most despised—we are (if you will) the mere dregs and off—scourings of the world, or worse, if worse can be named: so that before God there remains nothing of which we can glory save only his mercy, by which, without any merit of our own, we are admitted to the hope of eternal salvation:6 and before men not even this much remains,7 since we can glory only in our infirmity, a thing which, in the estimation of men, it is the greatest ignominy even tacitly8 to confess. But our doctrine must stand sublime above all the glory of the world, and invincible by all its power, because it is not ours, but that of the living God and his Anointed,