Institutes 4.1.29 — OF THE TRUE CHURCH. DUTY OF CULTIVATING UNITY WITH HER, AS THE MOTHER OF ALL THE

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**OF THE TRUE CHURCH. DUTY OF CULTIVATING UNITY WITH HER, AS THE MOTHER OF ALL THE GODLY.**

I am not unaware, that by the sins which are daily forgiven to believers, ancient writers have understood the lighter errors which creep in through the infirmity of the flesh, while they thought that the formal repentance which was then exacted for more heinous crimes was no more to be repeated than Baptism. This opinion is not to be viewed as if they wished to plunge those into despair who had fallen from their first repentance, or to extenuate those errors as if they were of no account before God. For they knew that the saints often stumble through unbelief, that superfluous oaths occasionally escape them, that they sometimes boil with anger, nay, break out into open invectives, and labour, besides, under other evils, which are in no slight degree offensive to the Lord; but they so called them to distinguish them from public crimes, which came under the cognisance of the Church, and produced much scandal. French, “Ils usoient de cette maniere de parler afin de mettre difference autre les fautes privees, et les crimes publiques qui emportoient grands scandales en l’Eglise.”—They used this manner of speech, in order to make a difference between private faults and the public crimes which brought great scandals into the Church.

Source

• source-manifest/institutes — Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, tr. Beveridge 1845 (PD)
• evidence_grade: D_doctrinal_textbook