on. That which I said that the Spirit is to
a Christian, what the soul is to a man, if well considered, might present
the absolute necessity and excellency of this unto your eyes. Consider
what a thing the body is without the soul, how defiled and how deformed a
piece of dust it is, void of all sense and life, loathsome to look upon.

Truly the soul of man by nature is in no better case till this Spirit
enter, it hath no light in it, no life in it, it is a dark dungeon, such
as is described, Eph. iv. 18, "Having the understanding darkened, being
alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them,
because of the blindness of their heart." You have both in that word
darkness and deadness want of that shining light of God in the mind, so
that it cannot discern spiritual things that make to our eternal peace.
All the plainness and evidence of the gospel, though it did shine as a sun
about you, can not make you see or apprehend either your own misery or the
way to help it, because your dungeon is within, the most part cannot form
any sensible notion of spiritual things, that are duly sounding unto them
in the word. The eye of the mind is put out, and if it be darkness, how
great is that darkness! Certainly the whole man is without light, and your
way and walk must be in the dark, and indeed it appears that it is dark
night with many souls because if it were not dark, they could not run out
all their speed among pits and snares in the way to destruction. And from
this woful defect flows the alienation of the whole soul from the life of
God, that primitive light being eclipsed, the soul is separated from the
influence of heaven, and as Nebuchadnezzar's soul acted only in a brutal
way, when driven out among beasts, so the soul of man, being driven out
from the presence of the Lord, may act in a way common to beasts, or in
some rational way in things that concern this life, but it is wholly
spoiled of that divine life of communion with God. It cannot taste, smell,
or savour such things. O! if it were visible unto us, the state or the
ruinous soul, we would raise a more bitter lamentation over it than the
Jews did over Jerusalem, or the kings and merchants have reason to do over
fallen Babylon. Truly, we might bemoan it thus, "How is the faithful city
become a harlot! righteousness lodged in it, but now murderers," Isa. i.
21. Man was once the dwelling place of princely and divine graces and
virtues, the Lord him