“Each must bear his own cross. For whomever the Lord has adopted and deemed worthy of His fellowship ought to prepare themselves for a hard, toilsome, and unquiet life, crammed with very many and various kinds of evils. It is the Heavenly Father’s will thus to exercise them so as to put His own children to a definite test. Beginning with Christ, His first-born, He follows His plan with all His children.”
–John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, John T. McNeill, Ed. Library of Christian Classics (Nashville: Westminster John Knox, 1960), Vol. 1, Book 3, Chapter VIII, Section 1, p. 702.
