Quotes about Belief

As all future events are uncertain to us, so we hold them in suspense, as if they might incline to one side or the other. Yet in our hearts it nonetheless remains fixed that nothing will take place that the Lord has not previously foreseen.

True knowledge of God and of the secret of his wisdom comes from faith, because the obedience of faith opens to us the gate of the Kingdom of Heaven.

It is not denied that there is room for improvement; but what I maintain is, that the nearer any one approaches in resemblance to God, the more does the image of God appear in him. That believers may attain to it, God assigns repentance as the goal towards which they must keep running during the whole course of their lives.

This far, indeed, we differ from each other, in that everyone appropriates to himself some peculiar error; but we are all alike in this, that we substitute monstrous fictions for the one living and true God.

How childish is the attempt to meet this argument by the following sophism! "We were chosen because we were worthy, and because God foresaw that we would be worthy."

But we are not to forget that the stability of our salvation is not in us but in the secret election of God.

Even the wicked themselves, therefore, are an example of the fact that some idea of God always exists in every human mind.

We should not fill ourselves with hopes which, being empty of God's Word, are like so much wind.

For if anyone is to possess righteousness by faith, it must necessarily be given by God and proffered to us by his Word.

We should ask God to increase our hope when it is small, awaken it when it is dormant, confirm it when it is wavering, strengthen it when it is weak, and raise it up when it is overthrown.

There is no knowing that does not begin with knowing God.

It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility "faith"! (Institutio III.2.3)