Against the persecution of a tyrant the godly have no remedy but prayer.
John CalvinRead
Since no daily responses are given from heaven, and the Scriptures are the only record in which God has been pleased to consign His truth to perpetual remembrance, the full authority which they ought to possess with the faithful is not recognized unless they are believed to have come from heaven as directly as if God had been heard giving utterance to them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of faith in the Scriptures as the ultimate expression of divine truth.
John Calvin's quote illustrates the significance of the Scriptures as the authoritative word of God. He argues that for believers to fully recognize the authority of the Bible, they must accept it as a direct communication from God, akin to hearing His voice directly. This underscores the need for faith in religious texts as a means of understanding divine truth and guidance.
Themes
FaithScripturesAuthorityTruthBelief
In practice
Example use cases
During a sermon, a pastor might use this quote to emphasize the importance of biblical authority in the lives of believers.
More from John Calvin
All quotes →The pastor ought to have two voices: one, for gathering the sheep; and another, for warding off and driving away wolves and thieves. The Scripture supplies him with the means of doing both.
John CalvinRead
Man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's majesty.
John CalvinRead
Whomever the Lord has adopted and deemed worthy of His fellowship ought to prepare themselves for a hard, toilsome, and unquiet life, crammed with very many and various kinds of evil.
John CalvinRead
For as the aged, or those whose sight is defective, when any book, however fair, is set before them, though they perceive that there is something written, are scarcely able to make out two consecutive words, but, when aided by glasses, begin to read distinctly, so Scripture, gathering together the impressions of Deity, which, till then, lay confused in our minds, dissipates the darkness, and shows us the true God clearly.
John CalvinRead
When God wants to judge a nation, He gives them wicked rulers.
John CalvinRead
Similar quotes
You can't keep a juvenile moral institution alive on two displays of its sash per year.
Mark TwainRead
Men are rewarded or punished not for what they do but for how their acts are defined. That is why men are more interested in better justifying themselves than in better behaving themselves.
Thomas SzaszRead
I ceased using words like optimism and pessimism a long time ago.
Wole SoyinkaRead
In place of a world, there is a city, a point, in which the whole life of broad regions is collecting while the rest dries up. In place of a type-true people, born of and grown on the soil, there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman.
Oswald SpenglerRead
The world is such-and-such or so-and-so only because we tell ourselves that that is the way it is.
Carlos CastanedaRead
I want to convince you that humans are, to some extent, natural born essentialists. What I mean by this is we don't just respond to things as we see them or feel them or hear them. Rather, our response is conditioned on our beliefs, about what they really are, what they came from, what they're made of, what their hidden nature is.
Paul BloomRead