Out of the Miry Clay

For your consideration: an explanation of man’s condition apart from the grace of God…

Man, since he was corrupted by the fall, sins not forced or unwillingly, but voluntarily, by a most forward bias of mind; not by violent compulsion, or external force, but by the movement of his own passion; and yet such is the depravity of his nature, that he cannot move and act except in the direction of evil.  If this is true, the thing not obscurely expressed is, that he is under a necessity of sinning.
- John Calvin