QUESTION I. 263 counted for ? It is confessed that it was inflicted on them as inno- cent creatures in a state of trial, and therefore justice requires that they should have a recompence for these over -balancing sor- rows, which yet they are never likely to receive. Upon the whole therefore we cannot well impute the superior sorrows of mankind merelyto such a state of probation ; but they are rather to beaccounted for as the effects of some universal degeneracy, and the just displeasure of the righteous Creator and Governor of this world. But to make this appear yet plainer, I proceed to the next consideration. X. Not only those who are grownup in the practice of ini- quity, who may be supposed to be punished for their own sins and follies, but even all mankind in their earliest infancy are under some tokens ofthe displeasure of their Maker, before they become actual and personal transgressors, before they know any thing of moral good or evil, or can come into a state of trial. In the very youngest hours of life, before children can be said to perform rational actions, or to commit actual sins, they are subject to a thousand miseries : which shews them to be a race ofbeings out of favour with their Maker, and under his dis- pleasure even from their birth: For can we think a God of per- feet goodness, wisdom and equity, wouldbring such infant -beinga into existence, to feel such calamities in the complete innocence of spotless nature ? What anguish and pain are infants sometimes exposed to, even as they are coming into the world, and as soon as they are entered into it ? What agonies await their birth ? What nu- merous and acute maladies, what deplorable diseases are ready to attack them ? What gripes, what convulsions of nature, what cutting anguish, what pangs and inward torments, which bring some of them down to death, as soon as they have seen the light of this world a few hours or days ? And if they sur- vive the first three or four months of danger, what unknown torture do they find in the breeding of their teeth, and other maladies Of infancy, which can be told only by shrieks and tears, and that for whole days and nights together, white they are lingering on thevery borders of death? What additional pains and sorrows do they sustain sometimes by the negligence or po. verty of their mothers, andby the crueltyofnurses ? What sore bruises and unhappy injuriés, whereby many of them are brought down to the grave,'either on a sudden, or by slow and painful degrees'? Do wenot shudder with a sort of sympathy and compas- sion, when we read of children falling into the fire, and lying there in helpless screams till their limbs are burnedoff, or their lives expire in the flames ? Or when they drop into scalding vessels of some boiling liquid, whereby they resign their souls in
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