The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Institutions of the Christian Religion.
• Prefatory Address to His Most Christian Majesty, the Most Mighty and Illustrious Monarch, Francis, King of the French, His Sovereign; 1 John Calvin Prays Peace and Salvation In Christ. 2
• The Epistle to the Reader.
• Subject of the Present Work.
• Epistle to the Reader.
• Method and Arrangement, Or Subject of the Whole Work.
• General Index of Chapters.
• Book First.: of the Knowledge of God the Creator.
• Argument.
• Chapter I.: The Knowledge of God and of Ourselves Mutually Connected.—nature of the Connection.
• Chapter II.: What It Is to Know God.—tendency of This Knowledge.
• Chapter III.: The Knowledge of God Naturally Implanted In the Human Mind.
• Chapter IV.: The Knowledge of God Stifled Or Corrupted, Ignorantly Or Maliciously.
• Chapter V.: The Knowledge of God Conspicuous In the Creation and Continual Government of the World.
• Chapter VI.: The Need of Scripture, As a Guide and Teacher, In Coming to God As a Creator.
• Chapter VII.: The Testimony of the Spirit Necessary to Give Full Authority to Scripture. the Impiety of Pretending That the Credibility of Scripture Depends On the Judgment of the Church.
• Chapter VIII.: The Credibility of Scripture Sufficiently Proved, In So Far As Natural Reason Admits.
• Chapter IX.: All the Principles of Piety Subverted By Fanatics, Who Substitute Revelations For Scripture.
• Chapter X.: In Scripture, the True God Opposed, Exclusively, to All the Gods of the Heathen.
• Chapter XI.: Impiety of Attributing a Visible Form to God.—the Setting Up of Idols a Defection From the True God.
• Chapter XII.: God Distinguished From Idols, That He May Be the Exclusive Object of Worship.
• Chapter XIII.: The Unity of the Divine Essence In Three Persons Taught, In Scripture, From the Foundation of the World.
• Chapter XIV.: In the Creation of the World, and All Things In It, the True God Distinguished By Certain Marks From Fictitious Gods.
• Chapter XV.: State In Which Man Was Created. the Faculties of the Soul—the Image of God—free Will—original Righteousness.
• Chapter XVI.: The World, Created By God, Still Cherished and Protected By Him. Each and All of Its Parts Governed By His Providence.
• Chapter XVII.: Use to Be Made of the Doctrine of Providence.
• Chapter XVIII.: The Instrumentality of the Wicked Employed By God, While He Continues Free From Every Taint. 1
• Book Second.: of the Knowledge of God the Redeemer, In Christ, As First Manifested to the Fathers, Under the Law, and Thereafter to Us Under the Gospel.
• Argument.
• Chapter I.: Through the Fall and Revolt of Adam, the Whole Human Race Made Accursed and Degenerate. of Original Sin.
• Chapter II.: Man Now Deprived of Freedom of Will, and Miserably Enslaved.
• Chapter III.: Everything Proceeding From the Corrupt Nature of Man Damnable.
• Chapter IV.: How God Works In the Hearts of Men.
• Chapter V.: The Arguments Usually Alleged In Support of Free Will Refuted.
• Chapter VI.: Redemption For Man Lost to Be Sought In Christ.
• Chapter VII.: The Law Given, Not to Retain a People For Itself, But to Keep Alive the Hope of Salvation In Christ Until His Advent.
• Chapter VIII.: Exposition of the Moral Law.
• First Commandment.: I Am the Lord Thy God, Which Brought Thee Out of the Land of Egypt, Out of the House of Bondage. Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me.
• Second Commandment.: Thou Shalt Not Make Unto Thee Any Graven Image, Or Any Likeness of Anything That Is In Heaven Above, Or That Is In the Earth Beneath, Or That Is In the Water Under the Earth: Thou Shalt Not Bow Down Thyself to Them, Nor Serve Them.
• Third Commandment.: Thou Shalt Not Take the Name of the Lord Thy God In Vain.
• Fourth Commandment.: Remember the Sabbath Day to Keep It Holy. Six Days Shalt Thou Labour and Do All Thy Work: But the Seventh Day Is the Sabbath of the Lord Thy God. In It Thou Shalt Not Do Any Work, &c.
• Fifth Commandment.: Honour Thy Father and Thy Mother, That Thy Days May Be Long Upon the Land Which the Lord Thy God Giveth Thee.
• Sixth Commandment.: Thou Shalt Not Kill.
• Seventh Commandment.: Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery.
• Eight Commandment.: Thou Shalt Not Steal.
• Ninth Commandment.: Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbour.
• Tenth Commandment.: Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbour’s House, Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbour’s Wife, Nor His Man-servant, Nor His Maid-servant, Nor His Ox, Nor His Ass, Nor Any Thing That Is Thy Neighbour’s.
• Chapter IX.: Christ, Though Known to the Jews Under the Law, Yet Only Manifested Under the Gospel.
• Chapter X.: The Resemblance Between the Old Testament and the New. 1
• Chapter XI.: The Difference Between the Two Testaments.
• Chapter XII.: Christ, to Perform the Office of Mediator, Behoved to Become Man.
• Chapter XIII.: Christ Clothed With the True Substance of Human Nature.
• Chapter XIV.: How Two Natures Constitute the Person of the Mediator.
• Chapter XV.: Three Things Chiefly to Be Regarded In Christ—viz. His Offices of Prophet, King, and Priest.
• Chapter XVI.: How Christ Performed the Office of Redeemer In Procuring Our Salvation. the Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ.
• Chapter XVII.: Christ Rightly and Properly Said to Have Merited Grace and Salvation For Us.
• Book Third: the Mode of Obtaining the Grace of Christ. the Benefits It Confers, and the Effects Resulting From It.
• Argument.
• Chapter I.: The Benefits of Christ Made Available to Us By the Secret Operation of the Spirit.
• Chapter II.: Of Faith. the Definition of It. Its Peculiar Properties.
• Chapter III.: Regeneration By Faith. of Repentance.
• Chapter IV.: Penitence, As Explained In the Sophistical Jargon of the Schoolmen, Widely Different From the Purity Required By the Gospel. of Confession and Satisfaction.
• Chapter V.: Of the Modes of Supplementing Satisfaction—viz., Indulgences and Purgatory.
• Chapter VI.: The Life of a Christian Man. Scriptural Arguments Exhorting to It.
• Chapter VII.: A Summary of the Christian Life. of Self-denial. 1
• Chapter VIII.: Of Bearing the Cross—one Branch of Self-denial.
• Chapter IX.: Of Meditating On the Future Life.
• Chapter X.: How to Use the Present Life, and the Comforts of It.
• Chapter XI.: Of Justification By Faith. Both the Name and the Reality Defined.
• Chapter XII.: Necessity of Contemplating the Judgment-seat of God, In Order to Be Seriously Convinced of the Doctrine of Gratuitous Justification.
• Chapter XIII.: Two Things to Be Observed In Gratuitous Justification.
• Chapter XIV.: The Beginning of Justification. In What Sense Progressive.
• Chapter XV.: The Boasted Merit of Works Subversive Both of the Glory of God, In Bestowing Righteousness, and of the Certainty of Salvation.
• Chapter XVI.: Refutation of the Calumnies By Which It Is Attempted to Throw Odium On This Doctrine.
• Chapter XVII.: The Promises of the Law and the Gospel Reconciled.
• Chapter XVIII.: The Righteousness of Works Improperly Inferred From Rewards.
• Chapter XIX.: Of Christian Liberty.
• Chapter XX.: Of Prayer—a Perpetual Exercise of Faith. the Daily Benefits Derived From It.
• Chapter XXI.: Of the Eternal Election, By Which God Has Predestinated Some to Salvation, and Others to Destruction.
• Chapter XXII.: This Doctrine Confirmed By Proofs From Scripture.
• Chapter XXIII.: Refutation of the Calumnies By Which This Doctrine Is Always Unjustly Assailed.
• Chapter XXIV.: Election Confirmed By the Calling of God. the Reprobate Bring Upon Themselves the Righteous Destruction to Which They Are Doomed.
• Chapter XXV.: Of the Last Resurrection.
• Book Fourth.: of the Holy Catholic Church.
• Argument.
• Chapter I.: Of the True Church. Duty of Cultivating Unity With Her, As the Mother of All the Godly.
• Chapter II.: Comparison Between the False Church and the True.
• Chapter III.: Of the Teachers and Ministers of the Church. Their Election and Office.
• Chapter IV.: Of the State of the Primitive Church, and the Mode of Government In Use Before the Papacy.
• Chapter V.: The Ancient Form of Government Utterly Corrupted By the Tyranny of the Papacy.
• Chapter VI.: Of the Primacy of the Romish See.
• Chapter VII.: Of the Beginning and Rise of the Romish Papacy, Till It Attained a Height By Which the Liberty of the Church Was Destroyed, and All True Rule Overthrown.
• Chapter VIII.: Of the Power of the Church In Articles of Faith. the Unbridled Licence of the Papal Church In Destroying Purity of Doctrine.
• Chapter IX.: Of Councils and Their Authority. 1
• Chapter X.: Of the Power of Making Laws. the Cruelty of the Pope and His Adherents, In This Respect, In Tyrannically Oppressing and Destroying Souls.
• Chapter XI.: Of the Jurisdiction of the Church, and the Abuses of It, As Exemplified In the Papacy.
• Chapter XII.: Of the Discipline of the Church, and Its Principal Use In Censures and Excommunication.
• Chapter XIII.: Of Vows. the Miserable Entanglements Caused By Vowing Rashly.
• Chapter XIV.: Of the Sacraments.
• Chapter XV.: Of Baptism.
• Chapter XVI.: PÆdobaptism. Its Accordance With the Institution of Christ, and the Nature of the Sign.
• Chapter XVII.: Of the Lord’s Supper, and the Benefits Conferred By It.
• Chapter XVIII. 1: Of the Popish Mass. How It Not Only Profanes, But Annihilates the Lord’s Supper.
• Chapter XIX.: Of the Five Sacraments, Falsely So Called. Their Spuriousness Proved, and Their True Character Explained.
• Of Confirmation. 2
• Of Penitence.
• Of Extreme Unction, So Called.
• Of Ecclesiastical Orders.
• Of Marriage.
• Chapter XX.: Of Civil Government.
• One Hundred Aphorisms, * Containing, Within a Narrow Compass, the Substance and Order of the Four Books of the Institutes of the Christian Religion.
• Book I.
• Book II.
• Book III.
• Book IV.

OF PENITENCE.

The next place they give to Penitence, of which they discourse so confusedly and unmethodically, that consciences cannot derive anything certain or solid from their doctrine. In another place (Book III. chap. iii. and iv.), we have explained at length, first, what the Scriptures teach concerning repentance, and, secondly, what these men teach concerning it. All we have now to advert to is the grounds of that opinion of it as a sacrament which has long prevailed in schools and churches. First, however, I will speak briefly of the rite of the early Church, which those men have used as a pretext for establishing their fiction. By the order observed in public repentance, those who had performed the satisfactions imposed upon them were reconciled by the formal laying on of hands. This was the symbol of absolution by which the sinner himself regained his confidence of pardon before God, and the Church was admonished to lay aside the remembrance of the offence, and kindly receive him into favour. This Cyprian often terms to give peace. In order that the act might have more weight and estimation with the people, it was appointed that the authority of the bishop should always be interposed. Hence the decree of the second Council of Carthage, “No presbyter may publicly at mass reconcile a penitent;” and another, of the Council of Arausica, “Let those who are departing this life, at the time of penitence, be admitted to communion without the reconciliatory laying on of hands; if they recover from the disease, let them stand in the order of penitents, and after they have fulfilled their time, receive the reconciliatory laying on of hands from the bishop.” Again, in the third Council of Carthage, “A presbyter may not reconcile a penitent without the authority of the bishop.” The object of all these enactments was to prevent the strictness, which they wished to be observed in that matter, from being lost by excessive laxity. Accordingly, they wished cognisance to be taken by the bishop, who, it was probable, would be more circumspect in examining. Although Cyprian somewhere says that not the bishop only laid hands, but also the whole clergy. For he thus speaks, “They do penitence for a proper time; next they come to communion, and receive the right of communion by the laying on of the hands of the bishop and clergy” (Lib. iii. Ep. 14). Afterwards, in process of time, the matter came to this, that they used the ceremony in private absolutions also without public penitence. Hence the distinction in Gratian (Decret. 26, Quæst. 6) between public and private reconciliation. I consider that ancient observance of which Cyprian speaks to have been holy and salutary to the Church, and I could wish it restored in the present day. The more modern form, though I dare not disapprove, or at least strongly condemn, I deem to be less necessary. Be this as it may, we see that the laying on of hands in penitence was a ceremony ordained by men, not by God, and is to be ranked among indifferent things, and external exercises, which indeed are not to be despised, but occupy an inferior place to those which have been recommended to us by the word of the Lord.

The Romanists and Schoolmen, whose wont it is to corrupt all things by erroneous interpretation, anxiously labour to find a sacrament here, and it cannot seem wonderful, for they seek a thing where it is not. At best, they leave the matter involved, undecided, uncertain, confused, and confounded by the variety of opinions. Accordingly, they say (Sent. Lib. iv. Dist. 22, cap. 3), either that external penitence is a sacrament, and, if so, ought to be regarded as a sign of internal penitence; i. e., contrition of heart, which will be the matter of the sacrament, or that both together make a sacrament, not two, but one complete; but that the external is the sacrament merely, the internal, the matter, and the sacrament, whereas the forgiveness of sins is the matter only, and not the sacrament. Let those who remember the definition of a sacrament, which we have given above, test by it that which they say is a sacrament, and it will be found that it is not an external ceremony appointed by God for the confirmation of our faith. But if they allege that my definition is not a law which they are necessarily bound to obey, let them hear Augustine, whom they pretend to regard as a saint.1 “Visible sacraments were instituted for the sake of carnal men, that by the ladder of sacraments they may be conveyed from those things which are seen by the eye, to those which are perceived by the understanding” (August. Quæst. Vet. Test. Lib. iii). Do they themselves see, or can they show to others, anything like this in that which they call the sacrament of penance? In another passage, he says, “It is called a sacrament, because in it one thing is seen, another thing is understood. What is seen has bodily appearance, what is understood has spiritual fruit” (Serm. de Bapt. Infant). These things in no way apply to the sacrament of penance, as they feign it; there, there is no bodily form to represent spiritual fruit.

And (to despatch these beasts in their own arena) if any sacrament is sought here, would it not have been much more plausible to maintain that the absolution of the priest is a sacrament, than penitence either external or internal? For it might obviously have been said that it is a ceremony to confirm our faith in the forgiveness of sins, and that it has the promise of the keys, as they describe them: “Whatsoever ye shall bind or loose on earth, shall be bound or loosed in heaven.” But some one will object that to most of those who are absolved by priests nothing of the kind is given by the absolution, whereas, according to their dogma, the sacraments of the new dispensation ought to effect what they figure. This is ridiculous. As in the eucharist, they make out a twofold eating—a sacramental, which is common to the good and bad alike, and a spiritual, which is proper only to the good; why should they not also pretend that absolution is given in two ways? And yet I have never been able to understand what they meant by their dogma. How much it is at variance with the truth of God, we showed when we formally discussed that subject. Here I only wish to show that no scruple should prevent them from giving the name of a sacrament to the absolution of the priest. For they might have answered by the mouth of Augustine,2 that there is a sanctification without a visible sacrament, and a visible sacrament without internal sanctification. Again, that in the elect alone sacraments effect what they figure. Again, that some put on Christ so far as the receiving of the sacrament, and others so far as sanctification; that the former is done equally by the good and the bad, the latter by the good only. Surely they were more deluded than children, and blind in the full light of the sun when they toiled with so much difficulty, and perceived not a matter so plain and obvious to every man.

Lest they become elated, however, whatever be the part in which they place the sacrament, I deny that it can justly be regarded as a sacrament; first, because there exists not to this effect any special promise of God, which is the only ground of a sacrament;1 and, secondly, because whatever ceremony is here used is a mere invention of man; whereas, as has already been shown, the ceremonies of sacraments can only be appointed by God. Their fiction of the sacrament of penance, therefore, was falsehood and imposture. This fictitious sacrament they adorned with the befitting eulogium, that it was the second plank in the case of shipwreck, because if any one had, by sin, injured the garment of innocence received in baptism, he might repair it by penitence.2 This was a saying of Jerome. Let it be whose it may, as it is plainly impious, it cannot be excused if understood in this sense; as if baptism were effaced by sin, and were not rather to be recalled to the mind of the sinner whenever he thinks of the forgiveness of sins, that he may thereby recollect himself, regain courage, and be confirmed in the belief that he shall obtain the forgiveness of sins which was promised him in baptism. What Jerome said harshly and improperly—viz. that baptism, which is fallen from by those who deserve to be excommunicated from the Church, is repaired by penitence, these worthy expositors wrest to their own impiety. You will speak most correctly, therefore, if you call baptism the sacrament of penitence, seeing it is given to those who aim at repentance to confirm their faith and seal their confidence. But lest you should think this our invention, it appears, that besides being conformable to the words of Scripture, it was generally regarded in the early Church as an indubitable axiom. For in the short Treatise on Faith addressed to Peter, and bearing the name of Augustine, it is called, The sacrament of faith and repentance. But why have recourse to doubtful writings, as if anything can be required more distinct than the statement of the Evangelist, that John preached “the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins”? (Mark i. 4; Luke iii. 3).

[1 ] French, “Auquel ils font semblant de porter une reverence inviolable;”—for whom they pretend to have an inviolable respect.

[2 ] August. Quæst. Vet. Test. Lib. iii. De Bapt. Parvul. De Bapt. Cont. Donat. Lib. v.

[1 ] The French adds, “Car, comme nous avons assez declairé ci dessus, la promesse des clefs n’appartient nullement a faire quelque estat particulier d’absolution, mais seulement à la predication de l’Evangile soit qu’elle soit faite ou a plusieurs, ou a un seul, sans y mettre difference; c’est a dire, que par icelle promesse notre Seigneur ne fonde point une absolution speciale qui soit faite distinctement à un chacun mais celle qui se fait indifferement a tous pecheurs, sans addresse particuliere.”—For, as we have sufficiently shown above, the promise of the keys pertains not to the making of any particular state of absolution, but only to the preaching of the Gospel, whether it is made to several or to one only, without making any difference; that is to say, that by this promise our Lord does not found a special absolution which is given separately to each, but one which is given indifferently to all sinners, without particular application.

[2 ] Sent. Lib. iv. Dist. 14, cap. 1. De Pœnit. Dist. 1, cap. 2. August. Dictum in Decret. 15, Quæst. 1, Cap. Fermissime.