will responsible for the accomplishment or non-accomplishment of this
change? These questions we shall endeavor briefly and plainly to
answer.

We must necessarily return to man as he is before his conversion,
while still in his natural, sinful, unrenewed state. In this state of
sin, the will shares, in common with all the other parts of his being,
the ruin and corruption resulting from the fall. The natural man has
the "_understanding darkened;_" "_is alienated from the life of
God, through the ignorance that is in him, because of the blindness of
his heart_." He "_receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God
... neither can he know them_." He is "_in darkness_," "_dead in
trespasses and sins_."

Thus is the _whole man_ in darkness, blindness, ignorance,
slavery to Satan, and at enmity with God. He is in a state of
spiritual death. The will is equally affected by this total depravity.
If the natural man cannot even _see_, _discern_, or _know_ the things
of the Spirit, how much less can he _will to do_ them!

Before his conversion, man is utterly impotent "_to will or to
do_" anything towards his renewal. The strong words of Luther, as
quoted in the Form of Concord, are strictly scriptural: "In spiritual
and divine things which pertain to the salvation of the soul, man is
like a pillar of salt, like Lot's wife, yea, like a log and a stone,
like a lifeless statue, which uses neither eyes nor mouth, neither
senses nor heart." (Matt. iii. 9.) But that same God who could, out of
the very stones, raise up spiritual children to Abraham, can also
change the stony heart of man, and put life into those who were dead
in trespasses and sins.