Saturdays with Calvin #3

All men of sound judgment will therefore hold, that a sense of deity is indelibly engraved on the human heart. And that this belief is naturally engendered in all, and thoroughly fixed as it were in our very bones, is strikingly attested by the contumacy of the wicked, who, though they struggle furiously, are unable to extricate themselves from the fear of God.

For the world (as will be shortly seen) labors as much as it can to shake off all knowledge of God, and corrupts his worship in innumerable ways. I only say, that, when the stupid hardness of heart, which the wicked eagerly court as a means of despising God, becomes enfeebled, the sense of deity, which of all things they wished most to be extinguished, is still in vigor, and now and then breaks forth. Whence we infer, that this is not a doctrine which is first learned at school, but one as to which every man is, from the womb, his own master; one which nature herself allows no individual to forget, though many, with all their might, strive to do so.

Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.3.3, John Calvin, translated by Henry Beveridge, Hendrickson, pg.10.