The Work of the Spirit

[The Holy Spirit] kindles our hearts with the fire of love, both toward God and toward neighbor, and day by day He boils away and burns up the vices of our inordinate desire [Rom. 8:13], so that if there are in us any good works they are the fruits and powers of his grace. But our gifts, apart from him, are darkness of mind and perversity of heart [Gal. 5:19-21].

 

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536 Edition, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; The H. H. Meeter Center for Calvin Studies, 1995), 57.