An evil root of unbelief

And it is easy to observe that the occasion of the former sort of thoughts, which oppose or wander from God, are in general sinful tempers. For instance: Why is not God in all the thoughts, in any of the thoughts of a natural man? For a plain reason: be he rich or poor, learned or unlearned, he is an atheist (though not vulgarly so called); he neither knows nor loves God. Why are his thoughts continually wandering after the world? Because he is an idolater. He does not indeed worship an image, or bow down to the stock of a tree (Isaiah 44:19); yet he is sunk into equally damnable idolatry: he loves, that is, worships the world. He seeks happiness in the things that are seen, in the pleasures that perish in the using (Colossians 2:22). Why is it that his thoughts are perpetually wandering from the very end of his being, the knowledge of God in Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6)? Because he is an unbeliever; because he has no faith, or at least no more than a devil (James 2:19). So all these wandering thoughts easily and naturally spring from that evil root of unbelief (Hebrews 3:12).