Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else.
I believe the doctrine of election, because I am quite sure that if God had not chosen me I should never have chosen him; and I am sure he chose me before I was born, or else he never would have chosen me afterwards; and he must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why he should have looked upon me with special love.
Man is nothing; he hath a free will to go to hell, but none to go to heaven, till God worketh in him" and "you dishonour God by denying election. You plainly make salvation depend, not on God's 'free grace' but on Man's 'free will.'
I have my own opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else.
To me, Calvinism means the placing of the eternal God at the head of all things.
Calvinism is an all-embracing system of principles... It is rooted in a form of religion which was peculiarly its own, and form that specific religious consciousness there was developed first a particular theology, then a special church-order, and then a given form for political and social life.
It is inconceivable that the God who gives Himself in His Son to save us, should have created some people ordained to evil and damnation. There can only be one predestination to salvation. In and through Jesus Christ all people are predestined to be saved. Our free choice is ruled out in this regard. God wants free people, except in relation to this last and definitive decision. We are not free to decide and choose to be damned.
And I will go as far as Martin Luther, in that strong assertion of his, where he says, "If any man ascribes any of salvation, even the very least, to the free-will of man, he knows nothing of grace, and he has not learned Jesus Christ aright."
It [Calvinism] established a religion without a prelate, a government without a king.
Free will does not enable any man to perform good works, unless he is assisted by grace; indeed, the special grace which the elect alone receive through regeneration. For I stay not to consider the extravagance of those who say that grace is offered equally and promiscuously to all
Calvinism is the consistent endeavor to acknowledge the Creator as the Lord, working all things after the counsel of His will.
Let all Arminians know: we have as high an esteem for faith as any men in the world, but yet we will not rob Christ to clothe faith.
Reformed theology so far transcends the mere five points of Calvinism that it is an entire worldview.
Grace is necessary to salvation, free will equally so - but grace in order to give salvation, free will in order to receive it.
The purpose of God is the sovereign cause of all that good that is in man, and of all that external, internal and eternal good that comes to man. Not works past, for men are chosen from everlasting; not works present, for Jacob was loved and chosen before he was born; nor works foreseen, for men were all corrupt in Adam. All a believer's present happiness, and all his future happiness springs from the eternal purpose of God.
How do we know that God has elected us before the creation of the world? By believing in Jesus Christ.
For Scripture is the school of the Holy Spirit, in which, as nothing is omitted that is both necessary and useful to know, so nothing is taught but what is expedient to know. Therefore we must guard against depriving believers of anything disclosed about predestination in Scripture, lest we seem either wickedly to defraud them of the blessing of their God or to accuse and scoff at the Holy Spirit for having published what it is in any way profitable to suppress.
I think what Calvinism may offer us is that God's in charge of his world.
There are two great truths which from this platform I have proclaimed for many years. The first is that salvation is free to every man who will have it; the second is that God gives salvation to a people whom He has chosen; and these truths are not in conflict with each other in the least degree.
To suggest that the merciful, longsuffering, gracious and loving God of the Bible would invent a dreadful doctrine like Calvinism, which would have us believe it is an act of 'grace' to select only certain people for heaven and, by exclusion, others for hell, comes perilously close to blasphemy.
Christ did not die for any upon condition, if they do believe; but He died for all God's elect, that they should believe.
The most tremendous judgment of God in this world is the hardening of the hearts of men.
The assurance of the believer is not that God will save him even if he stops believing, but that God will keep him believing--God will sustain you in faith, he will make your hope firm and stable to the end. He will cause you to persevere.
God's ways do not change... Still he shows his freedom and lordship by discriminating between sinners, causing some to hear the gospel while others do not hear it, and moving some of those who hear it to repentance while leaving others in their unbelief, thus teaching his saints that hew owes mercy to none and that it is entirely of his grace, not at all through their own effort, that they themselves have found life.
In vain people busy themselves with finding any good of man's own in his will. For any mixture of the power of freewill that men strive to mingle with God's grace is nothing but a corruption of grace. It is just as if one were to dilute wine with muddy, bitter water.
