The Method of Grace

Secondly, Let us briefly consider what this spiritual death is, which as before was hinted is the absence of the quickening ¹spirit of Christ from the soul of any man. That soul is a dead soul into which the spirit of Christ is not infused in the work of regeneration, and all its works are dead works, as ⟨p. 531⟩they are called, Heb. 9. 14. For look how it is with the damned, they live, they have sense and motion, and an immortality in all these, yet because they are eternally separated from God, the life which they live, deserves not the name of life, but is every where in scripture styled death: So the unregenerate, they are naturally alive: they eat, and drink, they buy, and sell, they talk, and laugh, they rejoice in the creatures; and many of them spend their days in pleasures, and then go down to the grave. This is the life they live, but yet the scripture rather calls it death than life, because though they live, yet it is without God in the world, Eph. 2. 12. Though they live, yet it is a life alienated from the life of God, Eph. 4. 18. And therefore while they remain naturally alive, they are in scripture said to remain in death, 1 John 3. 14. and to be dead while they live; 1 Tim. 5. 6. And there is great reason why a Christless and unregenerate state should be represented in scripture under the notion of death, for there is nothing in nature which more aptly represents that miserable state of the soul than natural death doth. The dead see and discern nothing, and the natural man perceiveth not the things that are of God. The dead have no beauty or desirableness in them, Bury my dead, said Abraham, out of my sight: neither is there any spiritual loveliness in the unregenerate. True it is some of them have sweet natural qualities, and moral excellencies which are taking things; but these are as so many flowers decking and adorning a dead corpse. The dead are Objects of pity, and great lamentation, men use to mourn for the dead,