Pref Address 3-4

Three days in a row coffee has been brought to me. What am I doing so right? It is Van Hautte Eclipse Extra Bold coffee that I am drinking this morning.

In the reading this morning, Calvin addressed a few arguments that his adversaries have raised. They claimed that the Word of God is new, true doctrine is unknown, and the Word is uncertain. He addressed true vs false miracles. True miracles are from God and false miracles are just tricks or "sheer delusions of Satan."

Sometimes these tricks aren't even convincing. Last week someone showed me a rather silly video of a preacher waving his suit jacket in the air. At first, people would fall out when he would hit them with the jacket. Eventually, whole groups of people would fall out when he waved his coat in their general direction.

He moved on to refute some false teachings by earlier church leaders. Some of these teachings were being taught or still being taught by the Catholic church. He argued against lavish rites in the church, mandatory fasting and other dietary requirements, idle monks, images of Christ (which he considered idolatry), transubstantiation, celibacy for clergy, and more. A lot if issues were touched on in these few pages, but I know that once I get into the actual text of the Institutes Calvin will really deal with each issue.