But being not contented to be like God, that is, in holiness and righteousness, we would be as God in wisdom and sovereignty; and not attaining what we aimed at, we lost what we had.  Being in “honour we continued not, but became like the beasts that perish.”  We were first like God, and then like beasts.  By the loss of the image of God, our nature lost its preeminence, and we were reduced into order amongst perishing beasts; for notwithstanding some feeble relics of this image yet abiding with us, we have really, with respect unto our proper end, in our lapsed condition, more of the bestial nature in us than of the divine.  Wherefore, the restoration of this image in us by the grace of Jesus Christ, is the recovery of that pre-eminence and privilege of our nature which we had foolishly lost.

John Owen, in The Holy Spirit