Calvin’s “Great Book” contains a spiritual and impartial survey of the whole revelation which God has given to mankind in the Holy Scriptures. It is a temple of truth, a temple built, indeed, by uninspired hands, but built by a workman who was abundantly and wonderfully helped by the Holy Spirit of God. It is divided into four parts.
Book 1 – treats of the knowledge of God as the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all things. It affirms that every man by nature has some knowledge of God, but that man’s depravity is so great that he ignorantly and wickedly stifles this knowledge, although it is enforced by the testimony of God’s works in creation. Hence God, when He designs to make Himself known to men in a way of grace, gives them His written Word. This leads to a discussion of the authority and excellence of Holy Scripture, and of the revelation which God has therein given of Himself as God the Father, God the son, and God the Holy Ghost; not three Gods but one God. And at this point, lest any man should charge his own ignorance to the account of the Creator, Calvin treats of man’s original as created in the image of God, of the original freedom of man’s will, and the primitive perfection of human nature. Finally, to show that the Creator preserves and governs all He has created, he deals at great length with the subject of Divine providence.
Book II – treats of the knowledge of God the Redeemer, God in Christ. Man is fallen, involved in all the guilt and defilement of original sin, and has no power in himself to escape from sin or from the curse that is due to it. In fact, until man is reconciled to God and renewed in heart, nothing can proceed from him but what deserves condemnation. Hence man, being entirely lost, and incapable of helping himself or pleasing God by one good thought, must seek redemption outside of himself in Christ. Here Calvin shows that even under the Law in olden times Christ was known to the Jews as the Author of Salvation but was more fully revealed under the gospel. This leads to a discussion of the points of resemblance and difference between the Old and New Testaments. Next comes the necessity of the Incarnation: to save man the Son of God must become man. He did so: and the Divine and human natures are united in one person in Christ. He is our Prophet, Priest, and King. He accomplished the work of redemption, died, rose again, and ascended into heaven.
Book III - speaks of the Holy Spirit and his work. He unites us, through faith, to Christ, from whom we receive regeneration, repentance, and free justification. A faith which is unaccompanied with repentance is useless: in a true believer’s heart Christ produces continuous repentance. Prayer is the hand by which we receive the blessings treasured up in Christ. But not all men are thus united: hence Calvin goes on to speak of God’s eternal election, by which God, seeing nothing good in us but what He designed to bestow, gave us to Christ, and in due season united us to Him through the effectual call of the gospel. The full effects of regeneration will appear in the resurrection.
Book IV – speaks of the Church, and of the means which the Holy Spirit employs to call and preserve it; the preaching of the Word, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, by which things, as by a sceptre, Christ rules His spiritual Kingdom. And inasmuch as civil governments, though distinct from the spiritual kingdom of Christ, are in some sense homes and shelters for the Church in this world, our author tells us that such governments are a blessing from God which the Church should thankfully acknowledge until called to its eternal home, where God will be All in all.
Such is the sum of the Institutes of the Christian religion. In short, man, originally created upright, but afterwards completely ruined, finds his whole salvation outside of himself in Christ: to whom united by the Holy Ghost, given to us freely without regard to works to be performed by us, we receive by imputation a perfect righteousness, and also a sanctification which is begun in this life and perfected at the resurrection, that praise for so great mercy may be given to God by the heirs of the heavenly inheritance.