Human Depravity is a solemn doctrine
This
subject is indeed a most solemn one, and none can fitly
write or preach thereon unless his own heart be deeply awed
thereby. It is not something from which any man can detach
himself and expatiate thereon as though he were not directly
involved in it, still less as from a higher level looking down
upon those whom he denounces. Nothing is more incongruous and
ill-becoming than for a young preacher glibly to rattle off
passages of Scripture which portray his own vileness by nature.
Rather should they be read or quoted with the utmost gravity.
“As no heart can sufficiently conceive, so no tongue can
adequately express the state of wretchedness and ruin into which
sin has cast guilty, miserable man. In separating him from God,
it severed him from the only source of all happiness and
holiness. It has ruined him body and soul: the one it has filled
with sickness and disease; in the other it has defaced and
destroyed the image of God in which it was created. It has made
him love sin and hate God” (J. C. Philpot).
- A. W. Pink, The
Doctrine of Human Depravity
