Sundays with Jean

This week we have been slogging through Calvin's responses to various heresies. I keep hoping that we, as the Christian Church, will learn from these battles so that we don't need to repeat them. However, I am not finding many great quotes in this section. Never fear, however! I've been storing up quotes to share. Here are a few of them.

First, a great quote on the purpose of the Moral Law:

In our discussion of the knowledge of ourselves we have set forth this chief point: that empty of all opinion of our own virtue, and shorn of all assurance of our own righteousness-- in fact, broken and crushed by the awareness of our own utter poverty-- we may learn genuine humility and self-abasement. Both of these the Lord accomplishes in his Law. First, claiming for himself the lawful power to command, he calls us to reverence his divinity, and specifies wherein such reverence lies and consists. Secondly, having published the rule of his righteousness, he reproves us both for our impotence and for our unrighteousness. For our nature, wicked and deformed, is always opposing his uprightness; and our capacity, weak and feeble to do good, lies far from his perfection.
~Institutes I.7.1

And on God's promise of eternal life:

...we should reflect that we are promised long life in so far as it is a blessing of God; and that it is a blessing only in so far as it is evidence of God's favor, which he testifies to his servants far more richly and substantially through death, and proves it in the reality.
~Institutes I.8.37

And finally, of the eighth commandment:

In this manner, I say, let each man consider what, in his rank and station, he owes to his neighbors, and pay what he owes. Moreover, our mind must laways have regard for the Lawgiver, that we may know that this rule was established for our hearts as well as our hands, in order that men may strive to protect and promote the well-being and interest of others.
~Institutes I.8.46