Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses

HEAD II. The MISERY of MAN's Natural State.

EPHESIANS ii. 3. We—were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

HAVING showed you the sinfulness of man's natural state, I come now to lay before you the misery of it. A sinful state cannot be but a miserable state. If sin go before, wrath follows of course. Corruption and destruction are so knit together, that the Holy Ghost calls destruction, even eternal destruction, corruption, Gal. vi. 8. He that soweth to his flesh,shall of the flesh reap corruption, that is, everlasting destruction; as is clear from its being opposed to life everlasting, in the following clause. And so the Apostle having shown the Ephesians their real state by nature, to wit, that they were dead in sins and trespasses, altogether corrupt; he tells them in the words of the text, their relative state, namely, that the pit was digged for them, while in that state of corruption: being dead in sins, they were by nature children of wrath, even as others.

HAVING shewed you the sinfulness of man's natural state, I come now to lay before you the misery of it. A sinful state cannot be but a miserable state. If sin go before, wrath follows of course. Corruption and destruction are so knit together, that the Holy Ghost calls destruction, even eternal destruction, corruption, Gal. vi. 8. He that soweth to his flesh,shall of the flesh reap corruption, that is, everlasting destruction; as is clear from its being opposed to life everlasting, in the following clause. And so the Apostle having shown the Ephesians their real state by nature, to wit, that they were dead in sins and trespasses, altogether corrupt; he tells them in the words of the text, their relative state, namely, that the pit was digged for them, while in that state of corruption: being dead in sins, they were by nature children of wrath, even as others.