Frasi di Giovanni Calvino pagina 3

“Ci dobbiamo anche ricordare che Satana ha i suoi miracoli.”

Istituzione della religione cristiana

“[Parlando di Dio] L'infinità della sua essenza ci deve spaventare, sì che non tentiamo neanche di misurarla secondo il nostro metro.”

Istituzione della religione cristiana

“Sono solito definire il libro dei Salmi un'anatomia di tutte le parti dell'anima, perché non c'è sentimento nell'uomo che non sia qui rappresentato come in uno specchio.
Anzi, lo Spirito Santo ha messo qui, al vivo, tutti i dolori, le tristezze, i timori, i dubbi, le speranze, le preoccupazioni, le perplessità, fino alle più confuse emozioni che agitano l'animo degli uomini.”

Istituzione della religione cristiana

“It is a very important consideration that we are consecrated and dedicated to God; it means that we may think, speak, meditate, or do anything only with a view to his glory.”

Origine: Da Commento ai Salmi (1557); citato in Gianfranco Ravasi, L'incontro: ritrovarsi nella preghiera, Oscar Mondadori, Milano, 2014, p. 67. ISBN 978-88-04-63591-8

Giovanni Calvino: Frasi in inglese

“He who is off the course, the more swiftly he runs is the more distant from the goal and, therefore, the more unhappy. It is better to limp in the way than run out of the way.”

Page 26.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

“All the Fathers with one heart execrated, and with one mouth protested against, contaminating the word of God with the subtleties of sophists, and involving it in the brawls of dialecticians. Do they keep within these limits when the sole occupation of their lives is to entwine and entangle the simplicity of Scripture with endless disputes, and worse than sophistical jargon? So much so, that were the Fathers to rise from their graves, and listen to the brawling art which bears the name of speculative theology, there is nothing they would suppose it less to be than a discussion of a religious nature.”

John Calvin libro Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 3, Chapter 14, p. 643
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

“There is also an old proverb, that they who pay much attention to the body generally neglect the soul.”

John Calvin libro Institutes of the Christian Religion

Prefatory Address, p. 22
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

“For astronomy is not only pleasant, but also very useful to be known: it cannot be denied that this art unfolds the admirable wisdom of God.”

Page 90.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

“You cannot imagine a more certain rule or a more powerful suggestion than this, that all the blessings we enjoy are divine deposits which we have received on this condition that we distribute them to others.”

Commentary on the Book of Genesis. Chapter I http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/ipb-e/epl-01/cvgn1-03.txt. Genesis (1554)

“It cannot be denied that God in choosing and destining Mary to be the Mother of his Son, granted her the highest honor.”

Page 35.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

“Now among the other things proper to recreate man and give him pleasure, music is either the first or one of the principal; and we must think that it is a gift of God deputed for that purpose.”

Calvini Opera, Braunshweig-Berlin, 1863-1900, Volume 45, 348, (1877-78)

“We condemn those who affirm that a man once justified cannot sin. … As to the special privilege of the Virgin Mary, when they produce the celestial diploma we shall believe what they say.”

Introduction, Geneva Psalter 1539.

“It is no small honour that God for our sake has so magnificently adorned the world, in order that we may not only be spectators of this beauteous theatre, but also enjoy the multiplied abundance and variety of good things which are presented to us in it.”

John Calvin, Antidote to the Canons of the Council of Trent, Canon 23. (1547)

“All things being at God’s disposal, and the decision of salvation or death belonging to him, he orders all things by his counsel and decree in such a manner, that some men are born devoted from the womb to certain death, that his name may be glorified in their destruction.”

Works (1844) edited by the Calvin translation society, as quoted in Reformed Spirituality: An Introduction for Believers (1991) by Howard L. Rice, p. 59.

“It having been said above that God bends all the reprobate, and even Satan himself, at his will, three objections are started. First, that this happens by the permission, not by the will of God. To this objection there is a twofold reply, the one, that angels and men, good and bad, do nothing but what is appointed by God; the second, that all movements are secretly directed to their end by the hidden inspiration of God…”

In John Allen, ed., Institutes of the Christian Religion. Ioannis Calvini Institutio Christianae religionis http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC06656346&id=ONsOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA169&lpg=PA169&dq=calvin+%22devoted+from+the+womb%22&as_brr=1#PRA1-PA169,M1 (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1841), p.169.

“The aversion of the first Christians to the images, inspired by the Pagan simulachres, made room, during the centuries which followed the period of the persecutions, to a feeling of an entirely different kind, and the images gradually gained their favour. Reappearing at the end of the fourth and during the course of the fifth centuries, simply as emblems, they soon became images, in the true acceptation of this word; and the respect which was entertained by the Christians for the persons and ideas represented by those images, was afterwards converted into a real worship. Representations of the sufferings which the Christians had endured for the sake of their religion, were at first exhibited to the people in order to stimulate by such a sight the faith of the masses, always lukewarm and indifferent. With regard to the images of divine persons of entirely immaterial beings, it must be remarked, that they did not originate from the most spiritualised and pure doctrines of the Christian society, but were rejected by the severe orthodoxy of the primitive church. These simulachres appear to have been spread at first by the Gnostics,—i. e., by those Christian sects which adopted the most of the beliefs of Persia and India. Thus it was a Christianity which was not purified by its contact with the school of Plato,—a Christianity which entirely rejected the Mosaic tradition, in order to attach itself to the most strange and attractive myths of Persia and India,—that gave birth to the images.”

John Calvin libro Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book I Ch. 18 "The Instrumentality of the Wicked employed by God, while He continues free from every taint" as translated by Henry Beveridge.
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

“When we come to a comparison of heaven and earth, then we may indeed not only forget all about the present life, but even despise and scorn it.”

Origine: A Treatise of Relics (1549), p. 13

“Being humbled, we learn to call upon his strength which alone makes us stand up under such a load of afflictions.”

Page 74.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

“Some think that He does not call her 'mother' but only 'woman' so as not to inflict a deeper wound of sorrow on her heart. I do not reject this; but another conjecture is no less probable, that Christ wanted to show that now that He has completed the course of human life, He puts off the condition in which He has lived and enters into the heavenly kingdom where He will rule over angels and men. For we know that Christ's custom always was to recall believers from looking at the flesh. This was especially necessary at His death.”

Page 50.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

“I cannot think such language either right, or becoming, or suitable. … To call the Virgin Mary the mother of God can only serve to confirm the ignorant in their superstitions.”

Commentary on John 19:26
St John

“For all whom the Lord has chosen and received into the society of his saints ought to prepare themselves for a life that is hard, difficult, laborious, and full of countless griefs. It is the will of their heavenly Father to try them in this manner that he may test them.”

John Calvin, https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1556352468 Epistle CCC to the French church in London, 27th September 1552; translated by Jules Bonnet, p.362

“Nevertheless, our constant efforts to lower our estimate of the present world should not lead us to hate life or to be ungrateful toward God. For this life, though it is full of countless miseries, deserves to be reckoned among the divine blessings which should not be despised. Therefore, if we discover nothing of God’s goodness in it, we are already guilty of no small ingratitude toward him.”

Page 48.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

“In the mind perfect intelligence flourished and reigned, uprightness attended as its companion, and all the senses were prepared and moulded for due obedience to reason; and in the body there was a suitable correspondence with this internal order. But now, although some obscure lineaments of that image are found remaining in us; yet are they so vitiated and maimed, that they may truly be said to be destroyed. For besides the deformity which everywhere appears unsightly, this evil also is added, that no part is free from the infection of sin.”

Page 72.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

“If there had been any unbelief in Mary, that could not prevent God from accomplishing his work in any other way which he might choose. But she is called blessed, because she received by faith the blessing offered to her, and opened up the way to God for its accomplishment.”

Commentary on Genesis 1. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom01.vii.i.html, (1554) Genesis (1554)

“The name of Christ is used here instead of the Church, because the similitude was intended to apply—not to God's only-begotten Son, but to us. It is a passage that is full of choice consolation, inasmuch as he calls the Church Christ; for Christ confers upon us this honour —that he is willing to be esteemed and recognised, not in himself merely, but also in his members. Hence the same Apostle says elsewhere, (Eph. i. 23,) that the Church is his completion, as though he would, if separated from his members, be incomplete.”

Commentary on Luke 1:45 http://www.biblestudyguide.org/comment/calvin/comm_vol31/htm/ix.viii.htm. Harmony of Matthew, Mark, Luke

“The belief that the body of the Virgin was not interred on earth, but was taken to heaven, has deprived them of all pretext for manufacturing any relics of her remains, which otherwise might have been sufficiently abundant to fill a whole churchyard; yet in order to have at least something belonging to her, they sought to indemnify themselves for the absence of other relics with the possession of her hair and her milk. The hair is shown in several churches in Rome, and at Salvatierra in Spain, at Macon, St Flour, Cluny, Nevers, and in many other towns. With regard to the milk, there is not perhaps a town, a convent, or nunnery, where it is now shown in large or small quantites. Indeed, had the Virgin been a wet-nurse her whole life, or a dairy, she could not have produced more than is shown as hers in various parts.”

Commentary on 1 Corinthians, 12:12. Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians, 1848, Rev. William Pringle, tr., Edinburgh, Volume 1, p. 405. http://books.google.com/books?id=tQsOAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA405&dq=%22calls+the+church+christ%22&hl=en&ei=w3_pTZW2CYLx0gGl2L2WAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAjgU#v=onepage&q=%22calls%20the%20church%20christ%22&f=false Epistles to the Corinthians

“For just as soon as a visible form has been fashioned for God, his power is also bound to it. Men are so stupid that they fasten God wherever they fashion him; and hence they cannot but adore. And there is no difference whether they simply worship an idol, or God in the idol. It is always idolatry when divine honors are bestowed on an idol, under whatever pretext this is done. And because it does not please God to be worshiped superstitiously, whatever is conferred upon the idol is snatched from him.”

Johnstone and Hunter edition (1854), p. 248
A Treatise of Relics (1543)

“No one has rightly denied himself unless he has wholly resigned himself to the Lord and is willing to leave every detail to his good pleasure. If we put ourselves in such a frame of mind, then, whatever may happen to us, we shall never feel miserable or accuse God falsely because of our lot.”

Institutes 1.11.9 as quoted in War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin by Carlos, M. N. Eire p.217