“Come, you dead, Christless, unconverted sinner, come and see the place where they laid the body of the deceased Lazarus; behold him laid out, bound hand and foot with graveclothes, locked up and stinking in a dark cave, with a great stone placed on top of it. View him again and again; go nearer to him; be not afraid; smell him, Ah! how he stinks. Stop there now, pause a while; and while you are gazing upon the corpse of Lazarus, give me time to tell you with great plainness, but also with a greater love, that this dead, bound, entombed, stinking carcass, is but a faint representation of your poor soul in its natural state;…your spirit which lives in you, sepulchered in flesh and blood, is literally dead to God, and as truly dead in trespasses and sins, as the body of Lazarus was in the cave. Was he bound hand and foot with graveclothes? So are you bound hand and foot with your corruptions; and as a stone was laid on the sepulchre, so there is a stone of unbelief upon your stupid heart. Perhaps you have lain in this estate, not only four days, but many years, stinking in God’s nostrils. And, what is still more effecting, you are as unable to raise yourself out of this loathsome, dead state, to a life of righteousness and true holiness, as ever Lazarus was to raise himself from the cave in which he lay so long. You may try the power of your boasted free will, and the force and energy of moral persuasion and rational arguments (which, without doubt, have their proper place in religion); but all your efforts, exerted with never so much vigor, will prove quite fruitless and abortive, till that same Jesus, who said ‘take away the stone’ and cried ‘Lazarus, come forth,’ also quicken you. This is grace, graciously offered, and grace graciously applied. Or as the Confession [Westminster Confession] originally puts it, ‘grace offered and conveyed.’”
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