Conviction of Sin

[PointyHaired Calvinist]

“Perhaps the most frequent form of religious experience on this subject [i.e. conviction] is a deep distress on account of the lack of an excitement of feeling corresponding with the judgment of the understanding and conscience. The common complaint with many is that they cannot feel; that their hearts are like ice; that the knowledge and perception of their ingratitude and disobedience produce little or no emotion. Such persons would gladly exchange their insensibility for the keenest anguish; their constant prayer is that God would take from them their heart of stone, and give them a heart of flesh. This form of experience is just as consistent with the nature of conviction of sin as the other [i.e. revulsion at the sin i one’s heart like Augustine or Luther] . All that is necessary is the testimony of conscience to the justice of the divine representations of our character and conduct; the consciousness and acknowledgment that we are what God declares us to be. Where this judgment of the conscience, or this sense of personal unworthiness exists, leading the sinner to lay his hand upon his mouth in the presence of God, and to bow at his feet as undeserving of mercy, there, as far as this point is concerned, is genuine conviction.”

The Way of Life
Charles Hodge