One continued dream and delusion!

(Thomas Boston, "Human Nature in its Fourfold State")

"There is no one who understands." Romans 3:11

"The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." 1 Corinthians 2:14

"They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts." Ephesians 4:18

The natural man's apprehension of divine things is corrupt. The understanding, that leading faculty, is despoiled of its primitive glory, and covered over with confusion.

Tell them how they may advance their worldly wealth, or how they may gratify their lusts-and they will quickly understand these things. But it is very hard to make them know how their souls may be saved, or how their hearts may find rest in Christ. They are very stupid and unteachable in the matters of God. What woeful delusions prevail over them! Do we not often see those, who in other things are the wisest of men-yet are notorious fools with respect to their soul's eternal interests?

Many who are eagle-eyed in the trifles of time-yet are like owls and bats in the light of eternal realities. Nay, truly, the life of every natural man is but one continued dream and delusion, out of which he never awakes, until either, by a divine light darted from Heaven into his soul, he comes to himself-or, in Hell he lifts up his eyes in torment!

Sin has closed the windows of the soul, and darkness covers the whole. The prince of darkness reigns there, and nothing but the works of darkness are framed there. We are born spiritually blind-and cannot be restored without a miracle of grace!

"For though your hearts were once full of darkness, now you are full of light from the Lord!" Ephesians 5:8