QUESTION 1V. 291 continually, in God's wise and holy providence. Do we ,not find the same sort of vice and iniquity, of disease and death, trans- mitted from parents to children, and that sometimes for many successive generations? As for instance i 1. In sins. How often do we find a proud, a passionate, a false, a malicious temper, a lewd or a sottish inclination, trans- mitted from parents to children ; so, that the features of their faces are scarcely so much copied out in theoffspring as the vices of their nature ? And in some houses from age to age, there is a raceof drunkards or adulterers, of cheats or thieves, of cruel, proud and malicious wretches continued in the world. 2. In miseries. How common a thing is it also to have the gout, the scurvy, the stone conveyed down from one generation to another ? How does theking's-evil descend to distant poste- rity ? Howoften does frenzy or madness run in the blood, and taint whole families ? }low frequently do the diseases of an infamous name, derived from the lewdness of predecessors, make the lives of their offspring short and miserable ? And howmany instances are there of a great part of a household that from one generation to another die of the small-pox, or a consumption of the lungs, in their youth, or in the midst of their days ? Now these are evident and unquestionable matters of fact with regard to particular sins and miseries, diseases and death ; these things are certain beyond all contest, and why maywe not easily suppose the sane matter of fact to be true with regard to the general depravation, misery and mortality of human na- ture ? Though the evidences of this general contagion may not appear quite so plain and so obvious, and within the grasp of our survey, yet perhaps reason may have as forcible arguments for it, and by this parallel instance may more easily solve the con- duct of providence in this universal depravation of nature. And indeed I think such parallel instances never would have been found aínong mankind, were it not for the first and general condemnation whichcane on all menby the sin of some first pa- rent, and the general depravation of all in that one head of our race; on which the next question proceeds. QUEST: IV.-But has it not an appearance of Injustice in the Creator dnd Governor of the World, to make so many Millions starfor the Sin of One? Answer. '-This appearance of injustice is in some measure relieved, if you consider this one man to be the natural head and fountain of all the rest ; even as a sickly and weakly animal 'among the brute creatures propagates a race of feeble and sickly T 2
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