(Continued from page 21)
II The State of Nature
Let us view man now as he has unmade himself, and we shall see him a sinful and a miserable creature. Boston writes, this is the sad state we are brought into by the fall — a state as black and doleful as the former was glorious. The scope and design of these words is, to clear God’s justice in bringing the flood on the old world. The heinousness of their sin made the earth which God had so adorned for the use of man, a sink of iniquity, and a stage whereon to act their wickedness, in defiance of heaven. But God made them to know that He took notice of their sins and that He had not forsaken the earth though they had forsaken heaven.
The soul which was made upright in all its faculties, is now wholly disordered. The heart that was made according to God’s own heart, is now the reverse of it, a forge of evil imaginations, a sink of inordinate affections, and a storehouse of all impiety. The heart is ever framing something but never one right thing. But is there not, at least, a mixture of good in their thoughts ‘No’ Boston writes ‘They are only evil, there is nothing truly in them good and acceptable to God.’ Whatever changes may be found in them, are only from evil to evil, not one holy thought can be produced by an unholy heart. Adam’s fall has framed all men’s hearts alike in this matter. The Fourfold State quotes many passages of Scripture to prove all that he writes.
The original frame of man is utterly marred, that it cannot be mended, but must needs be made new or lost altogether. Now the waters of the deluge being a like figure to baptism, it plainly follows that they signified, as baptism does, the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost. Here we see clearly the total corruption of our nature and the necessity of regeneration. Man was made in the likeness of God, holy and righteous, but fallen Adam begat a son in his own likeness, that is corrupt and sinful. ‘Man is born of woman, and how can he be clean that is born of a woman.’ The omnipotent God, whose power is here not challenged, could bring a clean thing out of an unclean, and did so out of the man Christ, but no other can. Every person that is born according to the course of nature is born unclean, so the holiest of parents beget unholy children, and cannot communicate their grace to them as they do their nature, which many godly parents find true in their sad experience. As the corruption of our nature shows the absolute necessity of regeneration, so the absolute necessity of regeneration plainly proves the corruption of our nature. God made man but ‘a little lower than the angels’ but now we find him likened unto the beasts that perish. He hearkened to a brute and is now become like one of them. The Scriptures hold out the natural man, not only as wanting the good qualities of the animals, but as a compound of the evil qualities of the worst of the creatures, in whom the fierceness of the lion, the craft of the fox, the un-teachableness of the wild ass, the filthiness of the dog and swine, the poison of the asp, and such like, meet. From whence comes the deluge of sin on the earth, but from the fountains of the great deep, the heart of man? out of which proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness. The corruption of nature is the same in you as in the most vile and profane wretches that are in the world. Lusts sometimes grow too strong for laws so that the civil law becomes slack as the pulse of a dying man. O, the corruption of man’s nature, the awe and dread of the God of heaven restrains them not. Is not sinful curiosity natural to us? and is not this a print of Adam’s image? How much like old Adam do we look in this eagerness for novelties, and disrelish of old solid doctrines? We seek after knowledge rather than holiness. Do not the eyes in our head often blind the eyes of our mind, and was not this the very case of our first parents? The soul is never cured of this disease, till conquering grace brings it back to take up its everlasting rest in God through Christ, but till this be, if man were set again in paradise the garden of the Lord, all the pleasures there would not keep him from looking, yea, and leaping over the hedge a second time.
There is a vileness in the body (Phil. 3:21) which as to the saints will never be removed, until it be melted down in the grave, and cast into a new form at the resurrection to come forth a spiritual body. Some are indeed brought to follow duties more closely, after convictions were sharp and piercing, but they are as far from Christ as ever, if not further. Thus it is evident that men’s hearts are naturally bent to the way of the law, and lies cross to the Gospel method, and the charge against you that are unregenerate is that you are enemies to the Son of God.
The sin of our first parents was a total apostasy from God, a violation of the whole law, of all the commandments. A swine brought into a palace would soon get away again, to wallow in the mire, and corrupt nature tends ever to impurity. Thus the natural man lives but must die too, and death is a dreadful messenger to him. It comes upon him armed with wrath. The bodies of the wicked will be reunited to their souls and they shall be eternally shut up in hell, never to get the least drop of comfort, nor the smallest alleviation of their torment. God will, through eternity, hold them up with one hand and pour the full vials of wrath into them with the other. There is no pain more exquisite than that which is caused by fire, and no fire so piercing as that of God’s indignation, that burns into the lowest hell. To all eternity it will still be the wrath to come. As a gracious state is a state of glory in the bud, so a graceless state is hell in the bud. Behold in the death of Christ how severe God is against sin. He, who is the wisdom of God, becomes sore amazed, ready to faint away in a fit of horror. The sun was struck blind with this terrible sight, rocks were rent, graves opened, death, as it were, in the excess of astonishment, letting its prisoners slip away. What is a deluge, a shower of fire and brimstone on the people of Sodom, the terrible noise of a dissolving world, the whole fabric of heaven and earth dissolving at once, and angels cast down from heaven into the bottomless pit. What are these, Boston says, in comparison with this, God in human nature suffering, groaning, dying upon a cross. Infinite holiness did it, to make sin look like itself, that is, infinitely odious, and will man live at ease, while exposed to this wrath? God will break that brazen brow and make that adamantine heart at last fly into a thousand pieces.
Then Boston shows man’s utter inability to recover himself, and he puts the question, ‘Why do you then preach Christ to us, call on us to come to Him, to believe, repent, and use the means of salvation?’ And the servant of the Lord answers, ‘Because it is your duty to do so, it is your duty to accept of Christ, as He is offered in the Gospel, to repent of your sins, and to be holy in all manner of conversation, these things are commanded you of God, and His command, not your ability, is the measure of your duty. O, that Arminians, proud, self-conceited, and hyper-calvinists, with their subtle rationalism, would pay attention to the Scriptural doctrines and exhortations of Thomas Boston, and that we would all tremble and examine ourselves as to what we have in view of eternity.
Well may we lament thy case, O natural man, for it is the saddest case one can be out of hell. It is time to lament for thee; for thou art dead already, dead while thou livest; thou carriest about with thee a dead soul in a living body; and because thou art dead thou canst not lament thy own case.
Thos. Boston