Pithy gems from John Calvin. Man's heart, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols. When the Bible speaks, God speaks. Nothing, including human suffering, happens by chance. No one will calmly and quietly submit to bear the cross, except those who have learned to seek their happiness beyond this world. Without the fear of God, men do not even observe justice among themselves. The human heart has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood works, and is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy that it often dupes itself. The secret things of God are not to be scrutinized. Those things which He has revealed are not to be overlooked. The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law. Deuteronomy 29. When God wants to judge a nation, he gives them wicked rulers. God preordained, for his own glory and the display of his attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation. and the other part, in just punishment of their sin, He has preordained to eternal damnation. I have given up all for Christ, and what have I found? I have more than all in Christ.