The following question and answers, produced from Calvin’s catechism, are listed in no certain order.
Master: If it is true that the sacraments were instituted by God to be helps to our necessity, is it not arrogance for any one to hold that he can dispense with them as unnecessary?
Scholar: It certainly is; and hence, if any one of his own accord, abstains from the use of them, as if he had no need of them, he contemns Christ, spurns his grace, and quenches the Spirit.
Master: How, then, and when does the effect follow the use of the sacraments?
Scholar: When we receive them in faith, seeking Christ alone and his grace in them.
Master: Seeing that faith is requisite for the use of them, how do you say that they are given us to confirm our faith, to make us more certain of the promises of God?
Scholar: It is by no means sufficient that faith is once begun in us. It must be nourished continually, and increase more and more every day. To nourish, strengthen, and advance it, the Lord instituted the sacraments. This indeed Paul intimates, when he says that they have the effect of sealing the promises of God. (Rom. iv. 11.)
Master: But do you attribute nothing more to the water that that it is a figure of ablution?
Scholar: I understand it to be a figure, but still so that the reality is annexed to it; for God does not disappoint us when he promises us his gifts. Accordingly, it is certain that both pardon of sins and newness of life are offered to us in baptism, and received by us.
Master: On what terms then are children to be baptized?
Scholar: To attest that they are heirs of the blessing promised to the seed of believers, and enable them to receive and produce the fruit of their Baptism, on acknowledging its reality after they have grown up.