Institutes of the Christian Religion (2 Volume Set)

by John Calvin

In like manner, he is said to blind all who do not believe the Gospel, and to do his own work in the children of disobedience.

And John adds still more emphatically, that the devil sinneth from the beginning

that they are even now excruciated and tormented by the glory of Christ,

as to leave us dependent on some other source; that in everything we desire we may address our prayers to him, and, in every benefit we receive, acknowledge his hand, and give him thanks; that thus allured by his great goodness and beneficence, we may study with our whole heart to love and serve him.

For though the divine glory is displayed in man’s outward appearance, it cannot be doubted that the proper seat of the image is in the soul.

Wherefore, although we grant that the image of God was not utterly effaced and destroyed in him, it was, however, so corrupted, that any thing which remains is fearful deformity; and, therefore, our deliverance begins with that renovation which we obtain from Christ, who is, therefore, called the second Adam, because he restores us to true and substantial integrity.

We now see how Christ is the most perfect image of God, into which we are so renewed as to bear the image of God in knowledge, purity, righteousness, and true holiness.

Therefore, as the image of God constitutes the entire excellence of human nature, as it shone in Adam before his fall, but was afterwards vitiated and almost destroyed, nothing remaining but a ruin, confused, mutilated, and tainted with impurity, so it is now partly seen in the elect, in so far as they are regenerated by the Spirit.

Because it is said that God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life (Gen. 2:7), they thought that the soul was a transmission of the substance of God; as if some portion of the boundless divinity had passed into man.

Creation, however, is not a transfusion of essence,12 4 but a commencement of it out of nothing.

But from the words of Paul, when treating of the renewal of the image (2 Cor. 3:18), the inference is obvious, that man was conformable to God, not by an influx of substance, but by the grace and virtue of the Spirit.

that by beholding the glory of Christ, we are transformed into the same image as by the Spirit of the Lord; and certainly the Spirit does not work in us so as to make us of the same substance with God.

Plato, however, advanced still further, and regarded the soul as an image of God.

For whence have men such a thirst for glory but from a sense of shame? And whence this sense of shame but from a respect for what is honourable? Of this, the first principle and source is a consciousness that they were born to cultivate righteousness,—a consciousness akin to religion.

First, I admit that there are five senses, which Plato (in Thereto) prefers calling organs, by which all objects are brought into a common sensorium, as into a kind of receptacle:12

Next comes the imagination (phantasia), which distinguishes between the objects brought into the sensorium:

Next, reason, to which the general power of J...

lastly, intellect, which contemplates with fixed and quiet look whatever reaso...

From this method of teaching we are forced somewhat to dissent.

philosophers, being unacquainted with the corruption of nature, which is the punishment of revolt, erroneously confound two states of man which are very different from each other.

Not to lose ourselves in superfluous questions, let it be enough to know that the intellect is to us, as it were, the guide and ruler of the soul; that the will always follows its beck, and waits for its decision, in matters of desire.

Others distinguish thus: They say that sense inclines to pleasure in the same way as the intellect to good; that hence the appetite of sense becomes concupiscence and lust, while the affection of the intellect becomes will.

Therefore, God has provided the soul of man with intellect, by which he might discern good from evil, just from unjust, and might know what to follow or to shun, reason going before with her lamp; whence philosophers, in reference to her directing power, have called her

To this he has joined will, to which choice belongs.

The principle they set out with was, that man could not be a rational animal unless he had a free choice of good and evil. They also imagined that the distinction between virtue and vice was destroyed, if man did not of his own counsel arrange his life.

had there been no change in man.

But those who, while they profess to be the disciples of Christ, still seek for free-will in man, notwithstanding of his being lost and drowned in spiritual destruction, labour under manifold delusion, making a heterogeneous mixture of inspir...

At present it is necessary only to remember, that man, at his first creation, was very differ...

At first every part of the soul was forme...

Such a nature might have been more excellent;13 9 but to expostulate with God as if he had been bound to confer this nature on man, is more than unjust, seeing he had full right to determine how much or how little He would give.

Why He did not sustain him by the virtue of perseverance is hidden in his counsel;

How things are said to be fortuitous to us, though done by the determinate counsel of God. Example. Error of separating contingency and event from the secret, but just, and most wise counsel of God. Two examples.

but because, governing heaven and earth by his providence, he so overrules all things that nothing happens without his counsel.

First, then, let the reader remember that the providence we mean is not one by which the Deity, sitting idly in heaven, looks on at what is taking place in the world, but one by which he, as it were, holds the helms and overrules all events.

The thing to be proved, therefore, is, that single events are so regulated by God, and all events so proceed from his determinate counsel, that nothing happens fortuitously.

If it is said that God fully manifests his beneficence to the human race, by furnishing heaven and earth with the ordinary power of producing food, the explanation is meagre and heathenish: as if the fertility of one year were not a special blessing, the penury and dearth of another a special punishment and curse from God.

In the Law and the Prophets he repeatedly declares, that as often as he waters the earth with dew and rain, he manifests his favour, that by his command the heaven becomes hard as iron, the crops are destroyed by mildew and other evils, that storms and hail, in devastating the fields, are signs of sure and special vengeance.

This being admitted, it is certain that not a drop of rain falls without the express command of God.

You would enjoy the context, if only i could make it fit #SovereigntyofGod

exclaims, “O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps,” (Jer. 10:23).

But the Lord sees very differently, and declares that He delivered him into the hand of the slayer (Exod. 21:13).

but we hold that God is the disposer and ruler of all things,—that from the remotest eternity, according to his own wisdom, he decreed what he was to do, and now by his power executes what he decreed.

In short, Augustine everywhere teaches, that if anything is left to fortune, the world moves at random.

And although he elsewhere declares (Qu^stionum, lib. 83). that all things are carried on, partly by the free will of man, and partly by the Providence of God, he shortly after shows clearly enough that his meaning was, that men also are ruled by Providence, when he assumes it as a principle, that there cannot be a greater absurdity than to hold that anything is done without the ordination of God; because it would happen at random.

His death was not only foreseen by the eye of God, but had been fixed by his decree.

Foolishly, indeed, when divination fails them they flee to fortune.

What seems to us contingence, faith will recognise as the secret impulse of God.

We have a familiar example in the case of our Saviour’s bones.

God made the bones of his Son frangible, though he exempted them from actual fracture; and thus, in reference to the necessity of his counsel, made that impossible which might have naturally taken place.

“A man’s heart deviseth his ways but the Lord directeth his steps,” (Prov. 16:9);

As all contingencies whatsoever depend on it, therefore, neither thefts nor adulteries, nor murders, are perpetrated without an interposition of the divine will.