But she that liveth in pleasure
Voluptuously, and deliciously; lives a wanton, loose, and
licentious life, serving divers lusts and pleasures:,
is dead while she liveth;
is dead in trespasses and sins, while she lives in them; is dead
morally or spiritually, while she lives a natural or corporeal
life. There is a likeness between a moral and a corporeal death.
In a corporeal death, the soul is separated from the body; and in
a moral death, souls are separated from God, and are alienated
from the life of God; and are without Christ, who is the author
and giver of spiritual life; and have not the Spirit, which is
the Spirit of life: death defaces and deforms the man, and a
moral death lies in the defacing of the image of God, first
stamped on man, and in a loss of original righteousness; for as
death strips a man naked of all, as he was when he came into the
world, so sin, which brings on this moral death, has stripped man
of his moral righteousness, whereby he is become dead in law, as
well as in sin: and as in death there is a privation of all
sense, so such who are dead, morally or spiritually, have no true
sense of sin, and of their state and condition; are not concerned
about sin, nor troubled for it, but rejoice in it, boast of it,
plead for it, and declare it: between such persons and dead men
there is a great similitude; as dead men are helpless to
themselves, so are they; they can do nothing of, nor for
themselves, in matters of a spiritual nature; and as dead men are
unprofitable unto others, so are they to God, and man; and as
dead men are hurtful and infectious to others, so they by their
evil communications corrupt good manners; and as dead bodies are
nauseous and disagreeable, so are such persons, especially to a
pure and holy Being; and as dead men are deprived of their
senses, so are these: they are blind, and cannot see and discern
the things of the Spirit of God; they have not ears to hear the
joyful sound of the Gospel, so as to understand it, approve of
it, and delight in it; they have no feeling, nor are they
burdened with the weight of sin; nor have they any taste and
savour of the things of God, but only of the things of men; so
that in a spiritual sense they are dead, while they are alive. It
is a common, saying to be met with in Jewish writers,
(Mytm Nyywrq Nhyyxb)
(Myevr) , "the wicked
while alive are said to be dead" F19. And they say F20 also,
that men are called (Mytm)
, "dead", from the time they sin; and that he that sins is
accounted (tmk) , "as a
dead man" F21.