disease, infection, corruption, wounds, plagues, poisons, hell. By Jonathan Edwards. All men by nature are under the power of a mortal disease, which if it not healed will surely bring them to eternal death. They are under the power and dominion of sin, and sin is the mortal disease of the soul. If it is not cured, it will certainly bring them to eternal death. The infection of the disease has powerfully seized their vital parts. The whole head is sick. The whole heart faint. The infection is spread throughout the whole frame. The very nature is corrupted, and the whole must come to ruin, if God by His mighty power does not heal the disease. The soul is under a mortal wound, a wound deep and dreadfully ingrained. Its roots reach the most vital parts, yes, they are principally seated there. There is a plague upon the heart, which corrupts and destroys the source of life, ruins the whole frame of nature, and hastens an inevitable death. There is a deadly poison which has been infused into and spread over the man. He has been bitten by a fiery serpent, whose bite issues in a most tormenting death. Sin is that which does as naturally tend to the misery and ruin of the soul, just as the most deadly poison tends to the death of the body. We look upon people far gone in a consumption, or with an incurable cancer, or some dreadful malady, as in doleful circumstances. But that mortal disease, under whose power natural men are, makes their case a thousand times more doleful. that mortal disease of natural men does, as it were, ripen them for damnation. The wickedness of natural men tends to sink them down to hell, as the weight of a stone causes it to tend toward the earth. Natural men have, as it were, the seeds of hell within their own hearts. Those principles of sin and corruption which are in them will at length breathe the torment of hell in them, and that necessarily and of their own tendency. The soul that remains under the power of sin will at length take fire of itself. Hell will kindle in them.