+I. The Gentiles walked in the vanity of their minds.+--The false
deities the Gentiles worshipped are called vanities. The prevalence
of idolatry is a melancholy proof of the depravity of human nature.
Atheism and idolatry proceed not from the want of sufficient evidence
that there is one eternal, all-perfect Being, but from that
corruption of heart which blinds the understanding and perverts the
judgment.
+II. The heathens were darkened in their understanding.+--Not in
respect of natural things, for in useful arts and liberal sciences
many of them greatly excelled; but in respect of moral truth and
obligation. Their darkness was owing, not solely to the want of
revelation, but to the want of an honest and good heart. Religion
consists not merely in a knowledge of and assent to Divine truths,
but in such conformity of heart to their nature and design, and in
such a view of their reality and importance as will bring the whole
man under their government.
+III. They were alienated from the life of God.+--They walked
according to the course of the world, not according to the will of
God. Their alienation was through ignorance. Particular wrong actions
may be excused on the ground of unavoidable ignorance. This ignorance
had its foundation in the obstinacy and perverseness of the mind.
Such a kind of ignorance, being in itself criminal, will not excuse
the sins which follow from it.
+IV. They were become past feeling.+--This is elsewhere expressed by
a conscience seared with a hot iron. By a course of iniquity the
sinner acquires strong habits of vice. As vicious habits gain
strength, fear, shame, and remorse abate. Repeated violations of
conscience blunt its sensibility and break its power.
+V. They gave themselves over to lasciviousness.+--If we break over
the restraints the Gospel lays upon is, and mock the terrors it holds
up to our view, we not only discover a great vitiosity of mind, but
run to greater lengths in the practice of iniquity. As water, when it
has broken through its mounds, rushes on with more impetuous force
than the natural stream, so the corruptions of the human heart, when
they have borne down the restraints of religion, press forward with
more violent rapidity, and make more awful devastation in the soul
than where these restraints had never been known.
+Reflections.+--1. _How extremely dangerous it is to continue in sin
under the Gospel._ 2. _You have need to guard against the beginnings
of sin._ 3. _Christians must be watchful lest they be led away by the
influence of corrupt example._ 4. _Religion lies much in the temper
of the mind.--Lathrop._