QUESTION XVI. 383 long enough to acquire any ideas of a God, a creature, a law, obedince and transgression, sin and duty, the favour of God, the loss of his favour, punishment, 4c. it is hardly to be supposed, that the blessed God will furnish them with these ideas in a future state of immortality, merely and for no other reason hut to make them feel their misery in their eternal loss of the divine favour and that on no other account, but for having been once born into this world in an unhappy relation to Adam, the actual sinner. Those short miseries which end withlife, are much more easy to be accounted for upon the foot of divine resentment for Adam's sin than any everlasting pains. The late learned Doctor Ridgley indeed, in his Discourses of Original Sin, with modesty and ingenuity has represented this sentiment to the world : And I cannot but declare myself so far of his opinion, that the blessed God will not impresson them these ideas of divine things, nor shew the souls of infants in the other world what are those powers and pleasures which they have lost by Adam's sin, on purpose only to torment those little creatures, whonever knew what sin was, nor ever sinnedagainst Gud in their wills, by actual personal disobedience. But where- as Doctor Ridgley supposes the immortal existenceof such infant souls in a sort of stupid ignorance or insensibility, which the scripture no where intimates, I think it is much more natural and reasonable to suppose, that God will deprive both body and soul of life which Adam had forfeited for himself and for them, according to the first threatening of death : And since the book of scripture has not revealed it, I cannot find it in the bookof reason, nor can I conceive what end it can attain in divine pro- vidence, to continue so many millions of infant souls in an eter- nal state of stupor : Is it agreeable to the conduct of infinite wisdom, and the government of a God, to maintain such an innumerable multitude of ideots, equal in number to almost all the rest of the human race, in a long endless duration, and to reign over such an immense nation of senseless and thoughtless immortals ? I add yet further, it is very hard to understand how a human soul, which I cannot conceive of but as a thinking being, should exist without any ideas at all, and that for eternal ages. Upon the whole therefore, the state of non - existence, to which we here suppose them to be reduced after death, is much more probable, being the least demerit of imputed sin, or an everlasting forfeiture of life, and a sort of endless punishment without pain. V. Neither have we any intimations from scripture, that all thebodies of infants will be raised again at the great day, in order to come into judgment : And if we will suffer ourselves to think and judge without prejudice, we may find it highly probable, that there are many thousands of infant bodies, which will never
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