“The Lord is pleased completely to restore all those he adopts to the inheritance of life. And this restoration is not accomplished in a single moment, or day, or year; but by continual, and sometimes even tardy advances, the Lord destroys the carnal corruptions of His chosen, purifies them from all pollution, and consecrates them as temples to Himself; renewing all their senses to real purity, that they may employ their whole life in the exercise of repentance, and know that this warfare will be terminated only by death… I assert, that as far as any man approaches to a resemblance of God, so far the image of God is displayed in him. That believers may attain to this, God assigns them the race of repentance to run during their whole life.”
–John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III:iii:9, in John McNeil, ed., Library of Christian Classics, Vol. XX, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 602.
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