We teach that all men are naturally depraved. We condemn man's free will, his strength, wisdom, and righteousness. We say that we obtain grace by the free mercy of God alone for Christ's sake.

Neither men who try to keep the Law, nor those who do not try to keep it, are justified before God, for they are all spiritually dead.

Not only are all men without exception declared to be guilty in God's sight, they are slaves to the sin that makes them guilty.

Grace remits sin, and peace quiets the conscience. Sin and conscience torment us, but Christ has overcome these fiends now and forever.

The most damnable and pernicious heresy that has ever plagued the mind of man was the idea that somehow he could make himself good enough to deserve to live with and all-holy God.

God has found out the guilt of your servants;

If all men have "free will" and yet all without exception are under God's wrath, then it follows that "free will" leads them in only one direction—"ungodliness and unrighteousness" (i.e., wickedness). So where is the power of "free will" helping them to do good? If "free will" exists, it does not seem to be able to help men to salvation because it still leaves them under the wrath of God.

The truth is, I am all sin.

If, therefore, you acknowledge that you have sin, if you tremble, if you are troubled by a feeling of God's wrath and by a horror of God's judgment and of hell, then have confidence. You are the one with whom God wants to speak, to whom God wants to show His mercy, and whom He wants to save.

So we are not sinners because we commit this or that sin, but we commit them because we are sinners first.

it is completely contrary to the nature of sin to confess that one has sinned.

Sinners are attractive because they are loved; they are not loved because they are attractive.