Every man that comes to be converted hath a heart of stone; and what is that? Insensible, inflexible. Insensible, he hath no feeling of his condition; inflexible, he will not be moved and wrought upon by the Word, and the Spirit, and Providence. How many means are wasted upon him, and to no purpose! “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it” (Jer. 17: 9). It invents all kinds of shifts and excuses to elude God, or rather to cheat itself. When God comes to work upon man, it slides away from under His hand as if salvation itself should not save them.
But is not the New Testament more favourable to man than the Old? Or, is not man grown better now that there is so much of God’s grace discovered? I answer, There is a perfect harmony between the Testaments: here he is styled “a child of wrath by nature” (Eph. 2: 3), the elect as well as others were so. Here you will find him to be “a servant of sin” (Rom. 6: 17). Never such an imperious master as sin is, never such a willing servant as man is. Sin never leaves commanding, and we love to work, and therefore are at its beck. Here you will find him to be represented as a man that hath a “blind understanding,” and a “hard heart,” and one that is “alienated from the life of God” (Eph. 4: 18). Here you will find him to be the one that is an “enemy to the Law of God”, “enmity” itself (see Rom. 8: 7), one that neither will nor can “please God”. One that is blind, and knows not what to do: II Peter 1: 9: “He that lacketh these things is blind,” and with such a blindness as is far worse than bodily. A man that is blind in his bodily eyes, would think it to be a great happiness to have a fit guide: as in Acts 13: 11, when Elymas was smitten blind, “he sought about for somebody to lead him by the hand” but he that is spiritually blind, cannot endure to have a guide; or if one would lead him, and direct him in the right way, he is angry. And as the Scripture represents him as blind, so “with strength” (Rom. 5: 6), “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2: 1), yea, worse than dead; a dead man doth no more hurt, his evil dieth with him; but there is a life of resistance and rebellion against God that goeth along. I have spoken but little, yet put all together, and then it shows what a miserably wretched creature man is.
The Scripture doth not speak this by hyperbole, nor once or twice, but everywhere, where it speaks of this matter, it sets out man to be blind, hard, dead, obstinate, and averse from God. Certainly man contributes little to his own conversation, if the Word of God sets him out everywhere to be such an one; he cannot hunger and thirst after Christ, that drinks in iniquity like water. Nothing in his nature to carry him to grace, who is altogether sinful.
If the Scripture had only said that man had accustomed himself to sin, and was not born in sin: if it had said that man is very prone, and not greedy and thirsty in iniquity: if it had only said that man did often think evil, but not continually: if the Scripture had said that man was somewhat obstinate, but not a stone, an adamant, and like the nether millstone: that he had been indifferent to God and the world, God and the flesh, and not a professed enemy: that he had been a captive of sin, and not a servant of sin: that man had been weak and not dead: only a neuter and not a rebel: than there might have been something in man; and the work of conversion and reducing to God had not been so great. But the Scripture saith quite the contrary, that man is all this and much more, therefore this clears it up, that his conversation is not in himself, but it is God Who must work this good in him, or else he can never be renewed. — Thomas Manton