"that Calvinism doesn't come from Calvin himself"
This is RIDICULOUS. I have never heard so much baloney. Dort, TULIP and most other confessions were LIFTED of the very pages of what Calvin wrote - 'The Institutes of the Christian Religion'.
As can be verified very simply thanks to google. A Calvinist really should Calvin's Institutes; IMO one is not qualified to call himself a Calvinist if he has NO IDEA about his mentor's works - including Luther or any confession.
For those that cannot be bothered:
JOHN CALVIN Said:
"I admit that in this miserable condition wherein men are now bound, all of Adam's children have fallen by God's will." Bk 3, Ch 23, s. 4
"With Augustine I say: the Lord has created those whom he unquestionably foreknew would go to destruction. This has happened because he has willed. Bk 3, Ch 23, s. 5
"Again I ask: whence does it happen that Adam's fall irremediably involved so many peoples, together with their infant offspring, in eternal death unless because it so pleased God? ... The decree is dreadful indeed, I confess. Yet no one can deny that God foreknew what end man was to have before he created him, and consequently foreknew because he so ordained by his decree." "And it ought not to seem absurd for me to say that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his descendants, but also meted it out in accordance with his own decision.. Bk 3, Ch 23, s. 7
"...salvation is freely offered to some while others are barred from access to it.." Bk 3, Ch 21, s. 5
"We call predestination God's eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is fore-ordained for some, eternal damnation for others." Bk 3, ch 21, s. 5
"The very inequality of his grace proves that it is free." Bk 3, ch 21, s 6
"..we say that God once established by his eternal and unchangeable plan those whom he long before determined once for all to receive into salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, he would devote to destruction. ...he has barred the door of life to those whom he has given over to damnation." Bk 3, Ch 21, s. 7
"...God could foresee nothing good in man except what he had already determined to bestow by the benefit of his election,.." Bk 3, Ch 22, s.5
"... predestination to glory is the cause of predestination to grace, rather than the converse." Bk 3, ch 22, s. 9
"...although the voice of the gospel addresses all in general, yet the gift of faith is rare." Bk 3, ch 22, s. 9
"Indeed many, ..accept election in such terms as to deny that anyone is condemned. But they do this very ignorantly and childishly, since election itself could not stand except as set over against reprobation. Bk 3, Ch 23, s 1.
"Therefore, those whom God passes over, he condemns; and this he does for no other reason than that he wills to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines for his own children." Bk 3, Ch 23, s. 1
"...it is utterly inconsistent to transfer the preparation for destruction to anything but God's secret plan." "..God's secret plan is the cause of hardening." B 2, Ch 23, s. 1
"But since he foresees future events only by reason of the fact that he decreed that they take place, they vainly raise a quarrel over foreknowledge, when it is clear that all things take place rather by his determination and bidding." Bk 3, Ch 23, s. 6
"For if predestination is nothing but the meting out of divine justice--secret, indeed, but blameless--because it is certain that they were not unworthy to be predestined to this condition, it is equally certain that the destruction they undergo by predestination is also most just. Besides, their perdition depends upon the predestination of God in such a way that the cause and occasion of it are found in themselves. For the first man fell because the Lord had judged it to be expedient; why he so judged is hidden from us." Bk 3, Ch 23, s. 8
"Man falls according as God's providence ordains, but he falls by his own fault." Bk 3, Ch 23, s. 8
All Quotations are from "THE INSTITUTES" of John Calvin, without alternation of any kind.