So perverse is the human heart that even when a person grows up under the constant sound of the gospel and hears the Word preached regularly, and has surrounding him or her godly models of the Christian life, unless God acts in sovereign grace, there will be no saving faith in the heart. Well did John Calvin put it in his Treatise on Eternal Election (1562): ‘It is not within our power to convert ourselves from our evil life, unless God changes us and cleanses us by his Holy Spirit.’[1]
[1] CO 8:113.