Let us take a more particular survey of him, and see whether these things are so or not: and first, as to his _understanding_. As man was created originally “after GOD in knowledge,” as well as righteousness and true holiness, we may rationally infer, that his understanding, in respect to things natural, as well as divine, was of a prodigious extent: for he was made but a little lower than the angels, and consequently being like them, excellent in his understanding, he knew much of GOD, of himself, and all about him; and in this as well as every other respect, was, as Mr. _Collier_ expresses it in one of his essays, a perfect major: but this is far from being our case now. For in respect to _natural things_, our understandings are evidently darkened. It is but little that we can know, and even that little knowledge which we can acquire, is with much weariness of the flesh, and we are doomed to gain it as we do our daily bread, I mean by the sweat of our brows.
Men of low and narrow minds soon commence wise in their own conceits: and having acquired a little smattering of the learned languages, and made some small proficiency in the dry sciences, are easily tempted to look upon themselves as a head taller than their fellow mortals, and accordingly too, too often put forth great swelling words of vanity. But persons of a more exalted, and extensive reach of thought, dare not boast. No: they know that the greatest scholars are in the dark, in respect to many even of the minutest things in life: and after all their painful researches into the _Arcanæ Naturæ_, they find such an immense void, such an unmeasurable expanse yet to be travelled over, that they are obliged at last to conclude, almost with respect to every thing, “that they know nothing yet as they ought to know.” This consideration, no doubt, led _Socrates_, when he was asked by one of his scholars, why the oracle pronounced him the wisest man on earth, to give him this judicious answer, “Perhaps it is, because I am most sensible of my own ignorance.” Would to GOD, that all who call themselves christians, had learnt so much as this heathen! We should then no longer hear so many _learned men_, falsely so called, betray their ignorance by boasting of the extent of their shallow understanding, nor by professing themselves so wise, prove themselves such arrant pedantic fools.
If we view our understandings in respect to _spiritual things_, we shall find that they are not only darkened, but become darkness itself, even “darkness that may be felt” by all who are not past feeling. And how should it be otherwise, since the infallible word of GOD assures us, that they are alienated from the light and life of GOD, and thereby naturally as incapable to judge of divine and spiritual things, comparatively speaking, as a man born blind is incapacitated to distinguish the various colours of the rainbow. “The natural man, (says an inspired apostle) discerneth not the things of the Spirit of GOD;” so far from it, “they are foolishness unto him;” and why? Because they are only to be “spiritually discerned.” Hence it was, that _Nicodemus_, who was blessed with an outward and divine revelation, who was a ruler of the _Jews_, nay a master of _Israel_, when our LORD told him, “he must be born again;” appealed to be quite grappled. “How (says he) can a man be born when he is old? can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born? how can these things be?” Were three more absurd questions ever proposed by the most ignorant man alive? or can there be a clearer proof of the blindness of man’s understanding, in respect to divine, as well as natural things? Is not man then a piece of marred clay?