QUESTION XVI. 389 regard to any thing of a future world, that there is no great danger of this event. The ties of nature and parental affection in the men of the world are generally much stronger than any tiling else that relates to another world. There are many of the wicked among men, who actually believe that children have no future state, and yet we do not find this temptation prevail. But further, Can we suppose any person can be so mad- and inconsistent as to fear the future uncertain danger of God's wrath for a child, if he has no fear of it for himself? Or will he run himself into certain present damnation if he die under such an impious and inhuman sin of wilful murder, in order to secure a child from the future uncertain danger of impenitence and dam. nation, that is, if it live to man's estate and grow wicked ? This is so unnatural a temptation, especially to wicked'parents who have little regard to future and eternal things, that if the repre- sentation which I have made of the case of infants, be agreeable to reason and scripture, I think the clanger of such a supposed possible inconvenience is so small, as is by no means sufficient to refute this scheme of thoughts, or to forbid the publication of it. XI. I should here also take notice that there is a third ob- jection against my hypothesis ; and that is, there have been some persons who suppose we have no needof this annihilating scheme concerning the case of infants, to mollify the severity of it, since in their opinion, one half of the fifth chapter to the Romans re- presents our Lord Jesus Christ as removing entirely all the guilt of the sin of Adam from mankind, and that the misery and destruction that was brought on the race of mankind, by the fall of theirfirst parents is effectually cancelled and abolished by the obedience and death of the Son of God, excepting only their sickness and natural death of their bodies, which infants are subject to as well as grown persons._ But to this I answer, The design of that chapter is to slew, that God has laid as sufficient and solid a foundation in the obedience and death of Christ for the recovery of men from the ruins of their nature, their guilt and misery, in and by the covenant of grace, as Adam had laid for the ruin and destruction of hisposterity according to the cove- nant of works : But as none but the posterityof Adam are in- volved in his curse, so the blessing is only applied there to those who become the seed and posterity of Christ by faith and repent- ance, and by accepting the covenant of grace : for it is suffici- ently evident from constant experience and observation in oppo- sition to this opinion, that sin and pain and death, which were brought in by the, fall of Adam, still infect human nature in every son and daughter of man which comes into the world : and how can these evident consequents and legal penalties of sin continue among infants, if all the guilt and consequent effects of Adam's sin' be takenaway from them by the undertakingof Chris. ? ab3
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