Of death in sin — All unregenerate men spiritually dead — Spiritual death twofold: legal; metaphorical — Life natural, what it is, and wherein it consists — Death natural, with its necessary consequents — The supernatural life of Adam in innocency, in its principle, acts, and power — Differences between it and our spiritual life in Christ — Death spiritual a privation of the life we had in Adam; a negation of the life of Christ — Privation of a principle of all life to God — Spiritual impotency therein — Differences between death natural and spiritual — The use of precepts, promises, and threatenings — No man perisheth merely for want of power — No vital acts in an state of death — The way of the communication of spiritual life — Of what nature are the best works of persons unregenerate — No disposition unto spiritual life under the power of spiritual death.
Another description that the Scripture gives of unregenerate men, as to their state and condition, is, that they are spiritually dead; and hence, in like manner, it follows that there is a necessity of an internal, powerful, effectual work of the Holy Ghost on the souls of men, to deliver them out of this state and condition by regeneration. And this principally respects their wills and affections, as the darkness and blindness before described doth their minds and understandings. There is a spiritual life whereby men live unto God; this they being strangers unto and alienated from, are spiritually dead. And this the Scripture declares concerning all unregenerate persons, partly in direct words, and partly in other assertions of the same importance. Of the first sort the testimonies are many and express: Eph. ii. 1, “Ye were dead in trespasses and sins;” Verse 5, “When we were dead in sins;” Col. ii. 13, “And ye being dead in your sins, and the uncircumcision of your flesh;” 2 Cor. v. 14, “If one died for all, then were all dead;” Rom. v. 15, “Through the offence of one many are dead;” Verse 12, “Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” And the same is asserted in the second way, where the recovery and restoration of men by the grace of Christ is called their “quickening,” or the bestowing of a new life upon them: for this supposeth that they were dead, or destitute of that life which in this revivification is communicated unto them; for that alone can be said to be quickened which was dead before. See Eph. ii. 5; John v. 21, vi. 63.
This death that unregenerate persons are under is twofold:—
1. Legal, with reference unto the sentence of the law. The sanction of the law was, that upon sin man should die: “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt die the death,” Gen. ii. 17. Upon this sentence Adam and all his posterity became dead in law, morally dead, or obnoxious unto death penally, and adjudged unto it. This death is intended in some of the places before mentioned; as Rom. v. 12, and it may be also, 2 Cor. v. 14: for as Christ died, so were all dead. He died penally under the sentence of the law, and all were obnoxious unto death, or dead on that account. But this is not the death which I intend, neither are we delivered from it by regeneration, but by justification, Rom. viii. 1.
2. There is in them a spiritual death, called so metaphorically, from the analogy and proportion that it bears unto death natural. Of great importance it is to know the true nature hereof, and how by reason thereof unregenerate men are utterly disabled from doing any thing that is spiritually good, until they are quickened by the almighty power and irresistible efficacy of the Holy Ghost. Wherefore, to declare this aright, we must consider the nature of life and death natural, in allusion whereunto the spiritual estate of unregenerate men is thus described.
Life in general, or the life of a living creature, is “Actus vivificantis in vivificatum1per unionem utriusque;” — “The act of a quickening principle on a subject to be quickened, by virtue of their union.” And three things are to be considered in it:—
1. The principle of life itself; and this in man is the rational, living soul, called נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים : Gen. ii. 7, “God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” Having formed the body of man of the dust of the earth, he designed him a principle of life superior unto that of brute creatures, which is but the exurgency and spirit of their temperature and composition, though peculiarly educed by the formative virtue and power of the Holy Ghost, as hath been before declared. He creates for him, therefore, a separate, distinct, animating soul, and infuseth it into the matter prepared for its reception. And as he did thus in the beginning of the creation of the species or kind of the human race, in its first individuals, so he continueth to do the same in the ordinary course of the works of his providence for the continuation of it; for having ordained the preparation of the body by generation, he immediately infuseth into it the “living soul,” the “breath of life.”