Institutes of the Christian Religion (2 Volume Set)

by John Calvin

By heavenly things, I mean the pure knowle...

method of true righteousness, and the mysteries of the...

To the latter (as to which, see the eighteenth and following sections) belong the knowledge of God and of his will, and the means of fra...

And this is ample proof, that, in regard to the constitution of the present life, no man is devoid of the light of reason.

We may add, that each individual is brought under particular influences according to his calling.

He intimates that the human soul is indeed irradiated with a beam of divine light, so that it is never left utterly devoid of some small flame, or rather spark, though not such as to enable it to comprehend God.

To the same effect is the testimony of the Apostle Paul, when he declares, that “no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost,” (1 Cor. 12:3).

“A man can receive nothing, unless it be given him from heaven,” (John 3:27).

It thus appears that none can enter the kingdom of God save those whose minds have been renewed by the enlightening of the Holy Spirit.

What the Apostle here denies to man, he, in another place, ascribes to God alone, when he prays, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation,” (Eph. 1:17). You now hear that all wisdom and revelation is the gift of God.

In other words, the minds of men have not capacity enough to know their calling. Let no prating Pelagian here allege that God obviates this rudeness or stupidity, when, by the doctrine of his word, he directs us to a path which we could not have found without a guide.

He who ascribes to himself more understanding than this, is the blinder for not acknowledging his blindness.

That homicide, putting the case in the abstract, is an evil, no man will deny; and yet one who is conspiring the death of his enemy deliberates on it as if the thing was good. The adulterer will condemn adultery in the abstract, and yet flatter himself while privately committing it.

Indeed, if we would test our reason by the Divine Law, which is a perfect standard of righteousness, we should find how blind it is in many respects. It certainly attains not to the principal heads in the First Table, such as, trust in God, the ascription to him of all praise in virtue and righteousness, the invocation of his name, and the true observance of his day of rest.

21). If every thing which our mind conceives, meditates plans, and resolves, is always evil, how can it ever think of doing what is pleasing to God, to whom righteousness and holiness alone are acceptable?

Even the schoolmen admit (Thomas, Part 1, Quwst. 83, art. 3), that there is no act of free will, unless when reason looks at opposites.

For this appetite is not properly a movement of the will, but natural inclination; and this good is not one of virtue or righteousness, but of condition—viz.

let us consider, in other respects, whether the will is so utterly vitiated and corrupted in every part as to produce nothing but evil, or whether it retains some portion uninjured, and productive of good desires.

Those who ascribe our willing effectually, to the primary grace of Gods (supra, sect. 6), seem conversely to insinuate that the soul has in itself a power of aspiring to good, though a power too feeble to rise to solid affection or active endeavour.

He is speaking of the Christian struggle (touched on more briefly in the Epistle to the Galatians), which believers constantly experience from the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit.

But the Spirit is not from nature, but from regeneration. That the apostle is speaking of the regenerate is apparent from this, that after saying, “in me dwells no good thing,” he immediately adds the explanation, “in my flesh.”

leading powers of the soul, tend towards what is good. The whole is made plain by the conclusion, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind,” (Rom. 7:22, 23).

And, indeed if we admit that men, without grace, have any motions to good, however feeble, what answer shall we give to the apostles who declares that “we are incapable of thinking a good thought?” (2 Cor. 3:6). What answer shall we give to the Lord, who declares, by Moses, that “every imagination of man’s heart is only evil continually?” (Gen. 8:21).

And, indeed, if divine grace were preceded by any will of ours, Paul could not have said that “it is God which worketh in us both to will and to do” (Phil. 2:13).

Away, then, with all the absurd trifling which many have indulged in with regard to preparation.

When he prays, “Create in me a clean heart,” he certainly does not attribute the beginning of the creation to himself. Let us therefore rather adopt the sentiment of Augustine, “God will prevent you in all things, but do you sometimes prevent his anger. How? Confess that you have all these things from God, that all the good you have is from him, all the evil from yourself,” (August. De Verbis Apost. Serm. 10). Shortly after he says “Of our own we have nothing but sin.”

EVERY THING PROCEEDING FROM THE CORRUPT NATURE OF MAN DAMNABLE.

Answer to the second Objection continued. No will inclining to good except in the elect. The cause of election out of man. Hence right will, as well as election, are from the good pleasure of God. The beginning of willing and doing well is of faith; faith again is the gift of God; and hence mere grace is the cause of our beginning to will well. This proved by Scripture.

summary of Augustine’s doctrine on free will.

But we have nothing of the Spirit except through regeneration. Everything, therefore, which we have from nature is flesh.

Thus he thunders not against certain individuals, but against the whole posterity of Adam—not against the depraved manners of any single age, but the perpetual corruption of nature.

In the elect, God cures these diseases in the mode which will shortly be explained; in others, he only lays them under such restraint as may prevent them from breaking forth to a degree incompatible with the preservation of the established order of things.

When the will is enchained as the slave of sin, it cannot make a movement towards goodness, far less steadily pursue it.

Every such movement is the first step in that conversion to God, which in Scripture is entirely ascribed to divine grace.

“The Lord has redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him from the hand of him that was stronger than he,”

(Jer. 31:11);

Thus simply to will is the part of man, to will ill the part of corrupt nature, to will well the part of grace.

“Man through liberty became a sinner, but corruption, ensuing as the penalty, has converted liberty into necessity,”