Matthew Poole and continuators on Ephesians 4:18

18 Having the understanding darkned , being alienated from the life of God , through the ignorance that is in them , because of the blindness of their heart .

The mind as reasoning and discoursing, and so their ratiocinations, and discourses themselves.

As to Spiritual things.

Not onely strangers to it, (for so are those Creatures which are not capable of it) but estranged from it; implying, that in Adam originally they were not so.

A Spiritual life; that life which God commands, and approves, and whereby God lives in Believers, and they live in him, Gal. 2.19, 20. and that both as to the principle of life, and the operations of it.

That ignorance which is naturally in them is the cause of their alienation from the Life of God, which begins in light, and knowledge.

Or rather hardness: the Gr. word signifies a cal[illegible: 3 letters], or braw[illegible: 1 letter]iness in the flesh, which is usual in the hands of Labourers. Either this is set down as another cause of their estrangement from the Life of God, or as the cause of their ignorance, which though in part it be natural to them, yet is encreased to farther degrees by their own hardness and obstinacy, shutting their eyes voluntarily against the light.

Marginal references: Chap. 2.12.; Rom. 1.24.; Or, hardness of their hearts.