Total Depravity [pp. 470-478]

476 Total Depravity. [July,
the sense in which that affirmation is made by Calvinists. We,
are not to be understood as affirming that all mankind are
equally wicked; nor that any one man is as wicked as he can,
be; nor that there is no difference in moral character between
men and devils. All such statements are uncandid caricatures
of Calvinism, or ignorant exaggerations, or unfortunate misapprehensions of it.
Nevertheless, wve ought candidly to recognize the liability to
occasion such misapprehensions by harsh or unguarded statements. In preaching and in writing, we are bound to consider
what impressions our words are likely to make upon our actual
hearers or readers, in their actual circumstances, and with their
actual culture, antecedents and prejudices. It is not enough
to consider only what impressions they are entitled to receive,
or would receive, if they were all capable of estimating our words
with grammatical and logical precision. We ought to do all in
our power, with the most patient care and painstaking, to ensure true impressions, even to ignorant, or weak, or prejudiced
hearers.
This may depend upon the state of our hearts, even more
than on the accuracy of our thinking, or the rhetorical faultlessness of our statements. Are we chiefly desirous of confounding and silencing opponents, or of winning and saving soulswinning them unto acceptance of the truth, that they may be
saved by its power, begotten through it into sonship to God?'
If we believe in total depravity as a matter of our own experience, the awful burden of which we share with our hearers; if
we solemnly, and humbly, and thankfully feel that from such
utter ruin and helplessness Christ has redeemed us, and the
patient love of the Holy Spirit is delivering us, this view and
this feeling will not probably be misunderstood. If we address
our hearers, not with harsh and imperious objurgation, but with
respectful, sorrowful, tender sympathy-not as if we forgot
that the human nature is our own nature, but confessing that
we, as well as they, need deliverance from its guilt and misery
-if we speak to men thus humbled, awed, burdened, they will
be apt to get our true meaning. The painful but necessary
truth will be apt to reach them, however rhetorically imperfect
our utterance of it may be. They will be apt to feel themselves as depraved as we honestly confess ourselves to be..