Contra Mundum: The Doctrine of Regeneration, Part 2:
The pioneer missionary Patrick described his own conversion in these telling words: "Whence I, once rustic, exiled, unlearned, who does not know how to provide for the future, this at least I know most certainly that before I was humiliated I was like a stone lying in the deep mire; and He that is mighty came and in His mercy lifted me up, and raised me aloft, and placed me on the top of the wall. And therefore I ought to cry out aloud and so also render something to the Lord for His great benefits here and in eternity - benefits which the mind of men is unable to appraise.”
Patrick envisions himself like an inanimate stone lying in the mud. This is a brilliant image. It illustrates perfectly man’s inability to do anything about his own spiritual condition. It illustrates man’s deadness in “trespasses and sins.” A stone can no more lift itself from the mire than it can understand the obnoxiousness of its condition.
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