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The Piety of John Calvin is an invaluable collection of his prose and poetry, masterfully assembled to promote a more personal grasp of Calvin the man and his devotion to God. Chapters examine Calvin’s spiritual pilgrimage and faith, his views of the Christian life and prayer, samples of his prayers, metrical Psalms set to music, and “prose-poems” adapted from Calvin’s more lyrical writings.

Adding interest are Ford Lewis Battles’s introduction to “True Peity According to Calvin,” David Hall’s foreword featuring both Calvin and Battles, daughter Nancy Howitt-Battles’s preface, and six Psalms from Calvin’s Psalter with music arranged by Stanley Tagg.

Endorsements

“Here is a treasure. With impeccable scholarship and insight, Battles picks out products of Calvin’s pen that take us closest to his heart, and presents them in a way that gives them fullest force. What a godly man! And what a wonderful book!”

—J. I. Packer, Board of Governors’ Professor of Theology, Regent College, Vancouver

“Ford Lewis Battles—a name that has by now rightly become virtually synonymous with the leading, modern edition of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion—set his fertile mind to explaining not only the systematic theology of the great Genevan Reformer but also the underlying piety that continually sparked the engine of that systematic theology. . . . The republishing of this volume adds important vignettes to the window of Calvin’s soul.”

—David W. Hall, Senior Pastor, Midway Presbyterian Church, Powder Springs, Georgia

“Ford Lewis Battles knows the heart and writings of John Calvin inside out. This book makes the rich, biblical warmth of the Reformer accessible to a North American pastor, student, or lay reader. . . . Six psalms that John Calvin versified, with melodies by cantors Greiter and Dachstein, are printed . . . harmonized by Stanley E. Tagg. The simple polyphonic settings catch the lilt and flow of the original melodies with captivating art.”

—Calvin Seerveld, Professor Emeritus in Aesthetics at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto

Ford Lewis Battles (1915–1979) received his Ph.D. from Hartford Theological Seminary. Battles was a visiting professor of church history at Calvin Theological Seminary and also taught at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and Hartford Theological Seminary. He was widely recognized as one of the foremost Calvin scholars of his era.

The Author

John Calvin

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