the deplorable corruption by nature

The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt; they have done abominable works; there is none that doth good.—Ps. 14:1.

This psalm is a description of the deplorable corruption by nature of every son of Adam, since the withering of that common root.
Some restrain it to the gentiles, as a wilderness full of briars and thorns, as not concerning the Jews, the garden of God, planted by his grace and watered by the dew of heaven. But the apostle, the best interpreter, rectifies this in extending it by name to Jews as well as Gentiles: Rom. 3:9, ‘We have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin;’ and Rom 3:10, 11, 12, cites part of this psalm and other passages of Scripture for the further evidence of it; concluding both Jews and Gentiles, every person in the world, naturally in this state of corruption.
The psalmist first declares the corruption of the faculties of the soul: ‘The fool hath said in his heart.’ Secondly, The streams issuing from thence, ‘they are corrupt,’ etc.; the first in atheistical principles, the other in unworthy practices; and lays all the evil, tyranny, lust, and persecutions by men, as if the world were only for their sake, upon the neglects of God, and the atheism cherished in their hearts.


- The Existence and Attributes of God.