Ten More Quotes from Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God

Last week I gave ten quotes from John Calvin's work on predestination. Predestination continues to be a controversial topic in the life of the church. It is worth carefully examining the Scriptures on the topic, but also how other Christians dealt with it in the past. Here are ten more quotes from this book by Calvin.

Yet this remains an incontrovertible fact, that the reprobate are set aside in the counsel of God to the end that in them He might demonstrate His power. 

God the maker of men takes them from the same clay and forms them for honor or dishonor by His will (Rom. 9:21).

Grace is conferred on few, when it could with equal right be denied to all.

Readers must be warned that Pighius condemns equally two propositions: that God from the beginning, when the state of man was still intact, decreed what would be his future; and that He now elects from the mass of perdition whom He wills.

Nothing in my teaching goes to show that God by His eternal counsel does not elect to life those whom He pleases and leaves others to destruction; or to deny that there are punishments ordained for evil works and a prize laid up for good.

In all His works, the Lord has the reason of His own glory. This precisely is the universal end.

Christ therefore is for us the bright mirror of the eternal and hidden election of God, and also the earnest and pledge.

But it is quite an intolerable insult to Christ to say that the elect are saved by Him, provided they look after themselves.

But it is manifest that our willing is vain unless God show mercy; but I do not know how it can be said that the mercy of God is vain unless we will.  

For we do not imagine that the elect always hold to the right course under the continual direction of the Spirit; we say that they often fall, err, suffer shipwreck and alienated from the way of salvation. But since the protection of God by which they are defended is stronger than all., they cannot fall into fatal ruin.

And one:

Therefore we both exhort and preach. Those who have ears to hear, hear us obediently; in those who do not, what is written is fulfilled: That hearing they may not hear (Is. 6:9); for they hear with the bodily sense but not with the assent of the heart. But why do some have and others not? that is, why is it given by the Father to some that they should come to the Son and not given to others? --Who has known the mind of the Lord? Must we deny what is evident because we cannot comprehend what is hidden?