From the Preface, on Calvin’s life, calling, work ethic, Godward devotion and dual pastoral emphases:
“News spread of his arrival, and prompted quick action on the part of Guillaume Farel (1489-1565), a dynamic, impetuous acquaintance of Calvin’s who had swayed much of French-speaking Switzerland toward Protestantism. Farel immediately confronted Calvin and threatened him with the wrath of God if he didn’t stay in Geneva…. Calvin submitted to what he perceived to be God’s call upon his life. ‘I was so terror stricken that I did not continue my journey…’ At first Calvin gave biblical lectures. Then he preached.” -Institutes, xii
“Now middle-aged, Calvin was overworked with daily preaching, teaching, and writing, producing comprehensive biblical commentaries and other books, including yet another expanded edition of the Institutes. Yet somehow he found time, at age fifity, to found the Geneva Academy… But Calvin’s weak physical condition could not maintain the pace. For the last five years of his life, until his death in 1564, at age 54, he worked through pain and sickness, sometimes so weak that he gave lectures in his bedroom. When urged to slow down, he quipped: ‘What? Would you have the Lord find me idle when he comes?’ Despite, or maybe because of, his international renown, Calvin requested that he be buried in an unmarked grave in a public cemetery – his whereabouts unknown except to his Maker-Redeemer.
In his final illness, Calvin commented on his own life: ‘While I am nothing, yet I know that I have prevented many disturbances that would otherwise have occurred in Geneva… God has given me the power to write… I have written nothing in hatred… but always I have faithfully attempted what I believed to be for the glory of God.’” -Institutes, xiv
“Calvin foundationally presumed a loving, merciful, personal – Trinitarian – God who actively sought out sinners to draw them to himself. Calvin used two key phrases to describe the Christian life: that faith is the ‘principle work’ of the Holy Spirit; that prayer is the ‘principle exercise’ of faith. All of life was to be lived before God as a prayer – as a dialogue with a personal God. Within this life of prayer, in gratitude for the gracious gift of salvation, believers would live orderly, socially redemptive lives.” -Institutes, xvi
