Private Thoughts About Human Depravity

Nothing in nature is more unknown to man than himself.

We aggravate the faults of others, to have a pretence for hating or despising them, and for the pleasure of self-comparison.

Whoever thinks he can acquit himself to God, has wrong notions of God, of himself, of duty, of sin. Either he considers God only under the single idea of mercy, or he knows nothing of his own great corruption; or contracts duty into a narrow compass, or fixes the guilt of sin at a low rate.

A conscious, reflecting being, eagerly coveting happiness, and seeking it every where but in Cod, is the monster of the universe. God could no more make such a creature, than he can unmake himself.

The heart of man pants everlastingly after distinction; and our pride only changes its appearance. Mine, I find, is grown to a goodly size, under the show of humility.

We can no more bear to be told of our faults by God than man; and we are in reality as much disgusted at the one as the other.

Charity does not oblige us to think any man good, because Christ says, “There is none good.”

Words cannot express the tormenting consciousness of a soul separated from the gracious influxes of God, and abandoned for ever to its own poverty and impotence.

If man is a sinner, why does he not believe it? And if he is not, why does he confess it? What a strange jumble of blindness and hypocrisy! We confess what we do not really believe, and yet really are what we confess.

We are sinners by the corruption of the heart; and it is a fatal mistake to suppose that we are so only by the commission of sin. Our guilt does not then begin to exist, when it is brought into action, but to appear; and what was always manifest to God, is now become so to ourselves and others.

We cannot go to the bottom of sin, without the convincing, searching Spirit of God. If the work is to be our own, we shall deal so very tenderly with ourselves, that nothing can ever come of it.

It is said, that riches, power, and distinction, are apt to corrupt the heart. The truth is, they find it corrupt; and all they do is, to set men at liberty to act according to their nature, and thus add to the strength of it.

No one can boast of what he does, or ever think of bringing it to account, who considers what he does not do.

Cod can save us only by his own power, for his glory, merely in a way of grace and favour, solely by Christ, to the end we may love, adore, and praise him; and yet the wish and will of man, notwithstanding the peculiar discoveries of the Christian religion, and the fullest conviction of infinite defect, is to be independent and self-saved.

Rev. Thomas Adam (1701–1784) was a godly divine and student of John Newton, who pastored a congregation in Lincolnshire for 58 years. Like John Newton, he remained within the Anglican Church all his life.

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