412 RUIN AND RECOVERY, íß.% amongst the various brutal tribes in earth, air and water, yet we supposethem still'to pass all the days of their existence ac- cording to the rank of their beings, and the condition of nature which the wise and righteous Governor has assigned them. We , look upon themall as innocent beings, for theyare capable ofno sin nor guilt, and therefore all these tortures and agonies which they sustain are no punishments ; they having never done any thing to give offence to their Maker: and yet, says the objector, you must either allow these brutes to have sinned against their Creator, since he appoints or suffers so many calamities to attend them in the very course of nature, or else you must confess that mankindmay sustain all the scenes of misery which are before described, without being under any peculiar displeasureof their Maker; and man, at least in his infancy and childhood, may be such a creature still as he came out of the hands of God, not- withstanding the vices he learns to practise as he grows up, and all these shapes of wretchedness which he is exposed to, and which are dressed up in this discourse into soformidable a spec- tacle. I think l`have spread out this objection in its complete force; and in order to answer it, I ask leave to propose the fol- lowingconsiderations : I. It has been the opinion of many divines that all these varieties of wretchedness came upon the brutal creation as a general curse for the sin of man, who was the chief inhabitant and lord of this lower world ; and therefore these brute- which were, as it were, his slaves, are punished together with him; so that they suppose' the sin of man brought misery into all the ranks of this lower creation, as well as into his own kind. But I must confess I never well approvedof this solution of the difficulty ; for though I know men may oftentimes, by their perverse wills, abuse thesecreatures of God, yet the con- tinual calamities that they fall into by being the natural and ap- pointed foodof men and of one another, as well as by unhappy accidents, by injuring, wounding, or killing casualties, by dis- eases, old age and death, are all ordained of God their Creatòr, as the God of nature, and in thecommon course ofthings, with- out any special reference to the sins of men, as the moral and procuring cause: I can hardly persuade myself that God made so many millions of sensible creafurés so miserable, or would permit them to be so, who are in themselves perfectly sinless and innocent, and havé no manner of proper relation to any sinful bead or stock, such as the first man is justly supposed to be to his own species; of which we have discoursed elsewhere. I proceed therefore to the second-consideration. IL . The scripture on one band gives us a plain acáount, that man originally was not made to die, and that the death of man- kindwas brought in only by sin ; Rom. v. 12. and all the evils
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