of these being fed by the sin of our nature, it is evident that it is the reigning sin, which never loses its superiority over particular lusts, which live and die with it, and by it. But, as in some rivers, the main stream runs not always in one and the same channel, so particular ruling sins may be changed, as lust in youth may be succeeded by covetousness in old age. Now, what does it avail to reform in other things, while the reigning sin remains in its full power? What though some particular lusts be broken? If sin, the sin of our nature, keep the throne, it will set up another in its stead; as when a water-course is stopped in one place, if the fountain is not closed up, it will stream forth another way. Thus some cast off their prodigality, but covetousness comes up in its stead; some cast away their profanity, and the corruption of nature sends not its main stream that way, as before, but it runs in another channel, namely, in that of a legal disposition, self-righteousness, or the like. So that people are ruined, by their not contemplating the sin of their nature.

6. It is an hereditary evil, Psalm li. 5, "In sin did my mother conceive me." Particular lusts are not so, but in the virtue of their cause. A prodigal father may have a frugal son; but this disease is necessarily propagated in nature, and therefore hardest to cure. Surely, then, the word should be given out against this sin, as against the king of Israel, 1 Kings xxii. 31, "Fight neither with small nor great, save only with this;" for this sin being broken, all other sins are broken with it; and while it stands entire, there is no victory.

How to get a View of the Corruption of Nature.

IV. That you may get a view of the corruption of your nature, I would recommend to you three things:-1. Study to know the spirituality and extent of the law of God, for that is the glass wherein you may see yourselves. 2. Observe your hearts at all times, but especially under temptation. Temptation is a fire that brings up the scum of the vile heart carefully mark the first risings of corruption. 3. Go to God, through Jesus Christ, for illumination by his Spirit. Lay out your soul before the Lord, as willing to know the vileness of your nature: say unto him, "That which I know not, teach thou me." And be willing to take light in from the word. Believe, and you shall see. It is by the word the Spirit teacheth; but without the Spirit's teaching, all other teaching will be to little purpose. Though the gospel were to shine about you like the sun at noon-day, and this great truth were ever so plainly preached, you would never see yourselves aright, until the Spirit of the Lord light his candle within your breast: the fulness and glory

of Christ, and the corruption and vileness of our nature, are never rightly learned, but where the Spirit of Christ is the teacher.

To shut up this weighty point, let the consideration of what has been said, commend Christ to you all. Yon that are brought out of your natural state of corruption, unto Christ, be humble; still come to Christ, and improve your union with him, to the farther weakening of your natural corruption. Is your nature changed? It is but in part so. If you are cured, remember the cure is not yet perfected, you still go halting. Though it were better with you than it is, the remembrance of what you were by nature should keep you low. You that are yet in your natural state, take this with you believe the corruption of your nature; and let Christ and his grace be precious in your eyes. O that you would at length be serious about the state of your souls! What do you intend to do? You must die; you must appear before the judgment-seat of God. Will you lie down and sleep another night at ease in this case? Do it not for, before another day, you may be summoned before God's dreadful tribunal, in the grave-clothes of your corrupt state; and your vile souls be cast into the pit of destruction, as a corrupt lump, to be for ever buried out of God's sight. For I testify unto you all, there is no peace with God, no pardon, no heaven, for you, in your natural state there is but a step between you and eternal destruction from the presence of the Lord; if the brittle thread of your life, which may break with a touch ere you are aware, be broken while you are in this state, you are ruined for ever, without remedy. But come speedily to Jesus Christ he has cleansed souls as vile as yours; and he will yet "cleanse the blood that he has not cleansed," Joel iii. 21. Thus far of the sinfulness of man's natural state.

PART II.

THE MISERY OF MAN'S NATURAL STATE.

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

HAVING shewn you the sinfulness of man's natural state, I come now to lay before you the misery of it. A sinful state cannot but be 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, ever. ing destruction; as is clear from its being opposed to life everlasting, in the following clause. The apostle having shewn the Ephesians their real state by nature, namely, 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 dug for them, while in that state of corruption: being dead in sins, they "were by nature children of wrath, even as others."

In the words we have four things:

1. The misery of a natural state; it is a state of wrath, as well as a state of sin. "We were," says the apostle, "children of wrath," bound over and liable to the wrath of God; under wrath in some measure; and, in wrath, bound over to more, even the full measure of it, in hell, where the floods of it go over the prisoners for ever. Thus Saul, in his wrath, adjudging David to die, 1 Sam. xx. 31; and David, in his wrath, passing sentence of death against the man in the parable, 2 Sam. xii. 5, says, each of them, of his supposed criminal, "He shall surely die;" or, as the words in the first language are, "He is a son of death." So the natural man is "a child of wrath, a son of death." He is a malefacior, dead in law, lying in chains of guilt; a criminal, held fast in his fetters, till the day of execution; which will not fail to come, unless a pardon be obtained from his God, who is his judge and his opponent too. By that means, indeed, children of wrath may become children of the kingdom. The phrase in the text, however common in the holy language, is very significant. And as it is evident that the apostle, calling natural men the "children of disobedience," verse 2, means more than that they were disobedient children; for such may the Lord's own children be: so, to be children of wrath, is more than simply to be liable to, or under wrath. Jesus Christ was liable to, and under wrath; but I doubt whether we have any warrant to say he was a child of wrath.-The phrase seems to intimate, that men are, whatever they are in their natural state, under the wrath of God; that they are wholly under wrath: wrath is, as it were, woven into their very nature, and mixes itself with the whole of the man, who is, if I may so speak, a very lump of wrath, a child of hell, as the iron in the fire is all fire. For men naturally are children of wrath; come forth, so to speak, out of the womb of wrath; as Jonah's gourd was the "son of a night," which we render, came up in a night," Jonah iv. 10; as if it had come out of the womb of the night, as we read of the "womb of the morning," Psalm cx. 3. Thus sparks of fire are called "sons of the burning coal," Job v. 7; Marg. Isa. xxi. 10, "O my thrashing, and the corn" or son "of my

floor," thrashed in the floor of wrath, and, as it were, brought forth by it. Thus the natural man is a "child of wrath;" it "comes into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones, Psalm cix. 18. For, though Judas was the only son of perdition amongst the apostles; yet all men, by nature, are of the same family.

2. Here is the rise of this misery; men have it by nature. They owe it to their nature, not to their substance or essence; for that neither is nor was sin, and therefore cannot make them children of wrath; though, for sin, it may be under wrath: not to their nature, as qualified at man's creation by his Maker; but to their nature, as vitiated and corrupted by the fall; to the vicious quality, or corruption of their nature, as before noticed, which is their principle of action, and, ceasing from action, the only principle in an unregenerate state. Now, by this nature, men are children of wrath; as, in time of pestilential infection, one draws in death with the disease then raging. Wherefore seeing, from our first being as children of Adam, we are corrupt children, shapen in iniquity, conceived in sin, we are also from that momeut children of wrath.

3. The universality of this misery. All are by nature children of wrath, "we," says the apostle, "even as others;" Jews as well as Gentiles. Those that are now, by grace, the children of God were, by nature, in no better case than those that are still in their natural state.

4. Here is a glorious and happy change intimated, we were children of wrath, but are not so now; grace has brought us out of that state. This the apostle says of himself, and other believers. And thus, it well becomes the people of God to be often standing on the shore, and looking back to the Red Sea, or the state of wrath, which they were once weltering in, even as others.

DOCTRINE, The state of nature is a state of wrath.-Every one, in a natural unregenerate state, is in a state of wrath. We are born children of wrath; and continue so, until we be born again. Nay, as soon as we are children of Adam, we are children of wrath. I shall introduce what I am to say on this point, with a few observations, as to the universality of this state of wrath, which may serve to prepare the way for the word into your consciences.

Wrath has gone as wide as ever sin went. When angels sinned, the wrath of God broke in upon them like a flood. "God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell," 2 Pet. ii. 4. It was thereby demonstrated, that no natural excellence in the creature can shield it from the wrath of God, if it once becomes a sinful creature. The finest and nicest piece of the workmanship of heaven, if once the Creator's image upon it be defaced by sin,

God can and will dash in pieces in his wrath, unless satisfaction be made to justice, and that image be restored; neither of which the sinner himself can do. Adam sinned; and the whole lump of mankind was leavened, and bound over to the fire of God's wrath. From the text you may learn, 1. That ignorance of this state, cannot free men from it. The Gentiles, that knew not God, 66 were by nature children of wrath, even as others." A man's house may be on fire, his wife and children perishing in the flames, while he knows nothing of it; and therefore is not concerned about it. Such is your case, O ye that are ignorant of these things! Wrath is silently sinking into your souls while you are blessing yourselves, saying,"We shall have peace." You need not a more certain token that you are children, of wrath, than that you never saw yourselves such. You cannot be the children of God, who never yet saw yourselves the children of the devil. You cannot be in the way to heaven, who never saw yourselves by nature in the high road to hell. You are grossly ignorant of your state by nature; and so ignorant of God and of Christ, and your need of him, and though you look on your ignorance as a covert from wrath, yet take it out of the mouth of God himself, that it will ruin you if it be not removed: Isa. xxvii. 11, "It is a people of no understanding :-therefore he that made them will not have mercy on them." See also 2 Thess. i. 8; Hos. iv. 6. 2. No outward privileges can exempt men from this state of wrath, for the Jews, the children of the kingdom, God's peculiar people, were "children of wrath, even as others." Though you be church members, partakers of all church privileges; though you be descended of godly parents, of great and honourable families; be what you will, you are by nature heirs of hell, children of wrath. 3. No profession, no attainments in a profession of religion, do or can exempt men from this state of wrath. Paul was one of the strictest set of the Jewish religion, Acts xxvi. 5, yet a child of wrath, even as others, till he was converted. The close hypocrite, and the profane, are alike as to their state, however different their conversation be; and they will be alike in their fatal end, Psalm cxxv. 5, "As for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways, the Lord shall lead them forth with the workers of iniquity." 4. Young ones, who are but setting out in the world, have not that to do to make themselves children of wrath, by following the graceless multitude they are children of wrath by nature; so it is done already. They were born heirs of hell; and they will indeed make themselves more so, if they do not, while they are young, flee from that wrath to which they are born, by fleeing to Jesus Christ. 5. Whatever men are now by grace, they were even as others by nature.

This