QUESTION XII. 343 tified or made holy here on earth by a great change wrought upon themby God's Holy Spirit, which is called regeneration, or being born again; that they should be enabled by the Spirit of God to comply with all the proposals or necessary terms of this covenant of grace or salvation, which ' should be appointed thepi by God himself as Governor of the world, or by Jesus Christ his Son, as his great vicegerent, and Lord of all: That their gins should be pardoned, both original and actual, so far as never to be shut out of the favour of God, and the promise of eternal life on the account of them : yet that they should sustain such sorrows and sufferings in their way to eternal happiness, as might teach them the evil nature and the bitter fruits of sin, and by degrees wean them from it : That they should have many as- sistances, reliefs and comforts, under the difficulties and trials, sorrows and miseries, which they should sustain in this life : That their souls should be received into a holy and peaceful state, in the presence of Christ in heaven, at the death of their bodies : And that their bodies should be raised again at the last day, and be rejoined to their souls, at which time they should be publicly acquitted, and acknowledged as the sons of God, and be freed from all the unhappy' effects and penalties of the fall of Adam, and be thenceforth made for ever happy in the presence of God. It would be too tedious to cite all the scriptures which prove this ; for they are scattered up and down everywhere in the New Tes- tament. 6. It seems also to be agreeable to the laws of nature and creation, that young children or infants, who are utterly incapa- ble of knowing either the laws of God, or the discoveries and proposals of his mercy, and of complying with either of them in their own persons, should be esteemed as apart of their parents, or as one with their parents, as to all the purposes of this dis- pensation of grace, and the blessings which flow from it; and therefore God is called, the Godof Abraham, and the God of his seed, in their successive generations ; Gen. xvii. 7, 8. Therefore the Gentiles, whenconverted to God, are said to be the seed ofthe blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them; Is. lxv. 23. I do not stand now to give any longer proof of this matter, which has been so much controverted ; but only add, it is not at all strange that God should make his covenant of grace so favourable and extensive to those children of pious persons, who never live to be capable of knowing or transacting these sacred affairs for themselves, since he has evidently so constituted it, in a great measure, in the kingdom of nature, and in the king- dom of providence ; for in these it is' evident, that children often inherit the gout or the stone, a healthy and robust constitu- tion, or sickness and pain, poverty or riches, disgrace or honour, according to the . condition and circumstances of their parents.
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