The highest virtue was faith, a matter more {165} of the heart than of the reason.

The divinity of Christ, he said, was apprehended by Christian experience, not by speculation.

Reason was fallacious; left to itself the human spirit "could do nothing but lose itself in infinite error, embroil itself in difficulties and grope in opaque darkness." But God has given us his Word, infallible and inerrant, something that "has flowed from his very mouth." "We can only seek God in his Word," he said, "nor think of him otherwise than according to his Word." Inevitably, Calvin sought to use the Bible as a rigid, moral law to be fulfilled to the letter.

His ethics were an elaborate casuistry, a method of finding the proper rule to govern the particular act.

He preached a new legalism; [Sidenote: Legalism] he took Scripture as the Pharisees took the Law, and Luther's sayings as they took the Prophets, and he turned them all into stiff, fixed laws.