The Institutes of the Christian Religion is John Calvin’s systematic summary of Protestant doctrine and the single most influential theological work of the Reformation. First published in Latin in 1536 as a short six-chapter catechism, it grew through successive revisions until the definitive 1559 Latin edition, in which Calvin arranged eighty chapters into four books following the order of the Apostles’ Creed: God the Creator, God the Redeemer in Christ, the mode of obtaining Christ’s grace, and the external means or aids (the Church and sacraments).
This text is Henry Beveridge’s 1845 English translation, made for the Calvin Translation Society. The famous Prefatory Address to Francis I and Calvin’s own prefatory pieces are included as unnumbered notes before Book I, and each book’s Argument precedes its chapters; the One Hundred Aphorisms summarizing the work follow Book IV.
Front Matter
- Prefatory Address to Francis, King of the French
- The Epistle to the Reader (1539)
- Subject of the Present Work
- Epistle to the Reader (1559)
- Method and Arrangement, or Subject of the Whole Work
Book I — Of the Knowledge of God the Creator
- The Knowledge of God and of Ourselves Mutually Connected.—Nature of the Connection
- What It Is to Know God,—Tendency of This Knowledge
- The Knowledge of God Naturally Implanted in the Human Mind
- The Knowledge of God Stifled or Corrupted, Ignorantly or Maliciously
- The Knowledge of God Conspicuous in the Creation, and Continual Government of the World
- The Need of Scripture, as a Guide and Teacher, in Coming to God as a Creator
- 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
- The Credibility of Scripture Sufficiently Proved in So Far as Natural Reason Admits
- All the Principles of Piety Subverted by Fanatics, Who Substitute Revelations for Scripture
- In Scripture, the True God Opposed, Exclusively, to All the Gods of the Heathen
- Impiety of Attributing a Visible Form to God.—The Setting Up of Idols a Defection from the True God
- God Distinguished from Idols, That He May Be the Exclusive Object of Worship
- The Unity of the Divine Essence in Three Persons Taught, in Scripture, from the Foundation of the World
- In the Creation of the World, and All Things in It, the True God Distinguished by Certain Marks from Fictitious Gods
- State in Which Man Was Created. The Faculties of the Soul—The Image of God—Free Will—Original Righteousness
- The World, Created by God, Still Cherished and Protected by Him. Each and All of Its Parts Governed by His Providence
- Use to Be Made of the Doctrine of Providence
- The Instrumentality of the Wicked Employed by God, While He Continues Free from Every Taint