Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion (The Library of Christian Classics)

As he observed his own conduct, the later Puritan also observed that of God and saw His finger in all the details of life. And, contrary to the strict doctrine of Calvin, he always knew why God took this or that measure. The process of sanctifying life could thus almost take on the character of a business enterprise.

We might summarize these four major points like this: God, man, Christ, and response.

And the traditional Christian praise of poverty cannot be Christian if it simply gives a religious blessing to the situation of the poor, promising them compensation in heaven, so that on earth the poor become poorer and the rich become richer.

Under the pen of Luther, the principles of the movement became ever clearer: the ‘priesthood of all believers’, the complete dependency of the soul on God’s grace, unmerited election to salvation, the ‘bondage of the will’ of fallen humanity (either to the devil or to God), the ‘freedom of the Christian’, salvation by faith and not by works, and th