QUESTION I. 265 ofan infant state, and guarded from every mischiefby akind and watchful providence. But alas, the case of children is quite the reverse of this purity and peace. Survey the dangers and miseries just men- tioned, and say, are these provided to receive young angels just entering into being ? Were these maladies and griefs and groans prepared to seize a race of little angels coming into our world ? If seraphs and cherubs had been made to propagate in our man- ner, would the great and good god have provided such scenes of pain and peril, disease and death, to have met their young blooming offspring at the very gates of life, and to have attended them all their way, or would he have sent them' so soon, and in such vast multitudes, fo death and darkness? Would. God have ever appointed a race of infant angels to have entered into be- ing in the midst of such infelicities, and have sent more than half of them to destruction again, before they arrived at the exercise of their intellectual powers, pr had seen or done, or enjoyed any thing worth living for ? Yet this is the wretched case of the off- spring of mankind in every generation. It has been objected here, that these sufferings of children may be for the correction Mad punishment of the sins of their pa- rents. But the answer is evident, viz. Can a God of equity and justice inflict such sufferings on children without any such consti- tution whereby the sins ofparents may be, as it were, translated, or imputed to the children, as Ì have shewn in the following parts of this book.? Besides, many of the parents of these suf- feringchildren may be dead, or absent, so as never to know it Bow can it ;then be a correction or punishment for their parents' sin, any other ways than as it is a general punishment for the sin of their first parent ? I know some have pretended to account for all these calami- ties of the infant race of mankind, by saying roundly, that God rewards them sufficiently in another world for a fewyears pain here, when he takes them to heaven. But I answer, Are all childrenwhich die secured of heaven, either by reason or scrip- ture ? If the infant seed of Abraham andhis pious followers, are taken to dwell with.God, as their God, are the children ofwicked parentsas happytoo ? Are you surethey are not subject to any pains hereafter ? Or that theirsouls are not annihilated at death ? And upon either of these suppositions there is no recompence for the pains theysuffer. Besides, a multitude of these grow up to mature years, and if they should prove wicked at last, and be sent to hell, what recompence have they for their infant-sufferings ? ,Or will you say, that God actually punished Them before they had sinned, and while they were innocent, because he knew before-hand they would sin ? Is this God's way of dealing with hiscreatures?
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