294 ttrIN ANO RECOVERY, &C. infants or any other children out of kindness, to prevent their . growing up to commit actual sins, and exposing themselves to a resurrection and judgment and everlasting misery ? I answer these two ways : L. Because this is directly contrary to the moral law Whereby God bath appointedto govern man, viz. thou shalt not kill; and and the laws of men, as well as the law of God, almost univer- sally' forbid all murder of the human race, and require blood for blood. It is. God's prerogative to cut off by death whom he pleases, but he bath not given this prerogative to man, nor will he break in upon the grand rule of his government of this world, so far as to give this piece of sovereignty out of his own hand. IL Because if men might slay any children at their own pleasure, they might slay some who would have grown up to virtue and religion, and then this infant. murder would cut these children offfrom future and'eternal happiness, which would have been very unjust, and which God will never permit. Upon the whole it is evident, that the scripture having never in any text that I can find, foretold the resurrection or judgment of the in- fants of sinful parents, and having pronounced the word death only, , as the penalty of Adam's sin or their interest in it, and de- nounced the final judgment and eternal misery only against ac- tual sinners; there is abundant reason to believe that God has knowingly and wisely appointed and ordered all these things, so that his providence might be secure from all charges of cruelty and injustice : And perhaps this hypothesis which I have here proposed, is nothing else but these very appointments and trans- actions of God set in their proper scriptural light to guard his providcnce.from censure. If I have failed in these attempts, let it beremembered that all the new or peculiar .sentiments which are found here, are merely offered to the world as probable conjectures drawn from reason end scripture, to relieve the difficulties which seem to hang on revealed truths., If, the method proposed is not ,suffi- cient for this purpose, I shall rejoice to see better solutions of them given, and to behold them set in a fairer light. Where I have laboured to follow the track of reason, it bath only been in order to do more abundant honour to divine revelation, to which I entirely submit my faith and practice ; and I solemnly. renounce.wbatsoever is inconsistent with it, for that cannot be right reason. And let us remember also, that if all our.áttelnpts of this kind should fail, yet we may rest assured of,this, that God is ever wise and righteous and good, that alt his transactions_ with men, how intricate and repugnant soccer they may seem to us, are highly consistent in his own view, and harmonize with all his own perfections : We may be assured that we are sinful
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=