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“Indeed, man is incapable of doing any good. Are all unbelievers then wicked and repulsive men? Not at all. In our experience we find that the unbelieving world excels in many things. Precious treasures have come down to us from the old heathen civilization. In Plato you find pages that you devour. Cicero fascinates you and bears you along by his noble tone and stirs in you holy sentiments…It is not exclusively the spark of genius or the splendor of talent, which excites your pleasure in the words and actions of unbelievers, but it is often their beauty of character, their zeal, their devotion, their love, their candor, their faithfulness, and their sense of honesty. Who of us has not been put to the blush by the virtues of the heathen? It is thus a fact, that your dogma of total depravity by sin does not always tally with your experience in life. Well, my friends, by its doctrine of common grace Calvinism can hold on to both what the Bible teaches on human depravity and to what experience teaches about the virtues of the heathen.” — Abraham Kuyper