Though John Calvin was not an advocate of pure doctrine, he writes some excellent words that elicits the following sentence written by a prophet of the tolerant Calvinists’ own:
“Beware of Antichrist; for, unhappily, a love of walls has seized you.”
A love of walls has seized most of the human race for most of history. Most of the human race for most of history have measured truth, reality, knowledge, righteousness, justice, love, mercy, grace, morality, family, etc., NOT by the plummet and touchstone of Scripture, but by that of the multitude.
“Thou shalt not follow a multitude to [do] evil” (Exodus 23:2).
True believers in the True Triune God of Scripture, even if painfully and periodically disheartened, will nevertheless, not be deterred in their characteristic purpose and end (Greek: telos); their duty and delight — which is to magnify Jesus Christ (Psalm 34:3; Philippians 1:20-21).
John Calvin writes:
“We see how vehemently the Papists alarm the simple by their false claim of the title of The Church. Moses so delineates the genuine features of the Church as to take away this absurd fear, by dissipating these illusions. It is by an ostentatious display of splendor and of pomp that they (the Papists) carry away the less informed to a foolish admiration of themselves, and even render them stupid and infatuated. But if we turn our eyes to those marks by which Moses designates the Church, these vain phantoms will have no more power to deceive. We are often disturbed and almost disheartened at the paucity of those who follow the pure doctrine of God; and especially when we see how far and wide superstitions extend their dominion.And, as formerly, the Spirit of God, by the mouth of Isaiah the prophet, commanded the Jews to look to the Rock whence they were hewn…so he recalls us to the same consideration, and admonishes us of the absurdity of measuring the Church by its numbers, as if its dignity consisted in its multitude.
If sometimes, in various places, Religion is less flourishing than could be wished, if the body of the pious is scattered, and the state of a well-regulated Church has gone to decay, not only do our minds sink, but entirely melt within us. On the contrary, while we see in this history of Moses, the building of the Church out of ruins, and the gathering of it out of broken fragments, and out of desolation itself, such an instance of the grace of God ought to raise us to firm confidence. But since the propensity, not to say the wanton disposition, of the human mind to frame false systems of worship is so great, nothing can be more useful to us than to seek our rule for the pure and sincere worshipping of God, from those holy Patriarchs, whose piety Moses points out to us chiefly by this mark, that they depended on the Word of God alone. …
…We see that with the Papists, although in some things they maintain deadly strife among themselves…they yet combine in wicked confederacy against the Gospel. It is not necessary to say how small is the number of those who hold the sincere doctrine of Christ, when compared with the vast multitudes of these opponents. In the meantime, audacious scribblers arise, as from our own bosom, who not only obscure the light of sound doctrine with clouds of error, or infatuate the simple and the less experienced with their wicked ravings…(John Calvin, Commentary on Genesis; Dedicatory; underlining mine).
Agrammatos 