(2.) Our ability to yield acceptable obedience to God, much more perfect obedience, is wholly lost, as being destitute of a principle of spiritual life and grace, which must, if ever we have it, be implanted in regeneration; so that every one may say with the apostle, _In me_ (_that is, in my flesh_,) _dwelleth no good thing_, Rom. vii. 18. (3.) We are destitute of a right to the heavenly blessedness, and all those privileges, that were promised upon condition of our first parents performing perfect obedience, according to the tenor of the covenant made with them in their state of innocency. This want of original righteousness is the immediate consequence of Adam’s first sin. By original righteousness we understand, either that freedom from guilt, which man had before he sinned, which exempted him from any liableness to condemnation, and afforded him a plea before God for his retaining the blessings he was possessed of; and, had he persisted longer in his integrity, it would have given him a right to a greater degree of happiness: His perfect obedience was his righteousness, in a forensick sense; and the failure thereof, in our first parents, rendered both them and us destitute of it. But, since this is the same with what is expressed in the foregoing words, wherein we are denominated guilty of Adam’s first sin, we must consider something else, as intended in this expression, when we are said to want that righteousness wherein he was created. We have before observed, that, by the fall of our first parents, the image of God in man was defaced: But now, we are to speak of his supernatural image, as what was wholly lost, and therefore all mankind are, by nature, destitute of a principle of grace; upon which account it may be truly said, as the apostle does, _There is none righteous; no, not one_, Rom. iii. 10. and elsewhere man is called, _A transgressor from the womb_, Isa. xlviii. 8. and, by nature, not only _a child of wrath_, but _dead in trespasses and sins_, Eph. ii. 1. and therefore it is necessary that we be created again to good works, or that a new principle of grace be implanted in regeneration, without which there is no salvation. Our being destitute of this supernatural principle of grace is distinguished from that propensity to sin, or corruption of nature, which is spoken of in the following words of this answer; and therefore, considering it as thus distinguished, and as called, by some, the _privative_ part of original sin; we are led to speak of man in his destitute state, deprived of that which was his glory, and tended to his defence against the assaults of temptation; and of those actual transgressions which are the consequence thereof. This excellent endowment man is said to have lost.