they could at present feel little else than self-indignant rage, and self-tormenting despondency : but their anguish, though not participating the ingenuous feelings of self-lothing and self-abhorrence, must have been pungent beyond all ex- pression: and they must have seemed to themselves to be monsters of iniquity.]
2. The misery they had incurred —
[Wherever they cast their eyes, they must now see how awfully they were despoiled. If they lifted them up to heaven, there they must behold the favour of their God for ever forfeited. If they cast them around, every thing must remind them of their base ingratitude ; and they would envy the meanest of the brute creation. If they looked within, O what a sink of iniquity were they now become ! The nakedness of their bodies, which in innocence administered no occasion for shame, now caused them to feel what need they had of covering, not for their bodies merely, but much more for their souls. If they thought of their progeny, what pangs must they feel on their account ; to have innumerable genera- tions rise in succession to inherit their depravity, and partake their doom ! If they contemplated the hour of dissolution, how terrible must that appear ! to be consigned, through diseases and death, to their native dust ; and to protract a miserable existence in that world, whither the fallen angels were banished, and from whence there can be no return ! Me- thinks, under the weight of all these considerations, they wept till they could weep no more e ; and till their exhausted nature sinking under the load, they fell asleep through excess of sorrow f.]
Infer,
1. How deplorable is the state of every unregene- rate man !
[Any one who considers the state of our first parents after their fall, may easily conceive that it was most pitiable. But their case is a just representation of our own. We are despoiled of the divine image, and filled with all hateful and abominable dispositions : we are under the displeasure of the Almighty : we have nothing to which we can look forward in this world, but troubles, disorders, and death; and in the eternal world, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish for evermore. Why do we not endeavour to get our minds suitably affected with this our melancholy condition? Why do we not see ourselves, as in a glass ; and apply to ourselves that commiseration which we are ready to bestow on our
e 1 Sam. xxx. 4. f Luke xxii. 45.