4. Our State by Nature
4. Our State by Nature
By nature, through the fall of Adam, are we the children of wrath, heirs of the vengeance of God by birth, yea, and from our conception. And we have our fellowship with the damned devils, under the power of darkness and rule of Satan, while we are yet in our mother’s wombs. And though we show not forth the fruits of sin as soon as we are born, yet are we full of the natural poison, whereof all sinful deeds spring, and cannot but sin outwardly (be we never so young), as soon as we be able to work, if occasion be given. For our nature is to do sin, as is the nature of a serpent to sting. And as a serpent, yet young, or yet unbrought forth, is full of poison, and cannot afterward (when the time is come, and occasion given) but bring forth the fruits thereof; and as an adder, a toad, or a snake, is hated of man (not for the evil that it has done, but for the poison that is in it, and hurt which it cannot but do)—so are we hated of God for that natural poison which is conceived and born with us, before we do any outward evil. And as the evil which a venomous snake does is not what makes it a serpent, but it does evil and poisons because it is a venomous snake; and as the fruit makes not the tree evil, but because it is an evil tree therefore it brings forth evil fruit, when the season of the fruit is—even so our evil deeds do not make us first evil (though ignorance and blindness, through evil working, harden us in evil and make us worse and worse), but because that by nature we are evil, therefore we both think and do evil, and are under vengeance, under the law convicted to eternal damnation by the law, and are contrary to the will of God in all our will, and in all things consent to the will of the fiend.24