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

2dly, There is wrath upon his soul. (1.) He can have no communion with God; he is foolish, and shall not stand in God's sight, Psal v. 5. When Adam sinned, God turned him out of paradise: and natural men are, as Adam left them, banished from the gracious presence of the Lord; and can have no access to him in that state. There is war betwixt heaven and them: and so all commerce is cut off. They are without God in the world, Eph. ii. 12. The sun is gone down on them, and there is not the least glimpse of favour towards them from heaven. (2) Hence the soul is left to pine away in its iniquity. The natural darkness of their minds, the averseness to good in their wills, the disorder of their assertions, and distemper of their consciences, and all their natural plagues, we left upon them in a penal way; and being so left, increase daily. God casts a portion of worldly goods to them, more or less; as a bone is thrown to a dog: but alas! his wrath against them appears, in that they get no grace. The Physician of souls comes by them, and goes by them, and cures others beside them; while they are consuming away in their iniquity, and ripening daily for utter destruction. (3.) They lie open to fearful additional plagues on their souls, even in this life. First, Sometimes they meet with deadening strokes; silent blows from the hand of an angry God; arrows of wrath that enter into their souls without noise, Isa. vi. 10. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, &c. God strives with them for a while, and convictions enter their consciences; but they rebel against the light: and by a secret judgment, they are knocked on the head; so that, from that time, they do as it were, live and rot above ground. Their hearts are deadened; their affections withered; their consciences stupefied; and their whole souls blasted; cast forth as a branch, and withered, John xv. 16. They are plagued with judicial blindness. They shut their eyes against the light, and they are given over to the devil, the god of this world, to be blinded more, 2 Cor. iv. 4. Yea, God sends them strong delusions, that they should believe a lie,