If an appeal to experience may be allowed, very holy and enlightened persons could attest, that, apart from the remembrance of their personal sins, they are strangers to remorse of conscience. Many, deeply humbled for the degradation of human nature, have adopted the exclamation of David, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me;" and many, deeply convinced of their personal criminality, have shuddered with dreadful forebodings of "the wrath revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men." But the case yet remains to be discovered, of one whose soul was wrung with agonies of remorse for Adam's transgression, as his own; or who was gasping with apprehensions of everlasting punishment, as merited by himself, for the apostacy of his first progenitor. Without presuming, however, that, unsupported by the sanction of the sacred records, the experience of any christian is satisfactory evidence of divine truth, it might perhaps reasonably be expected, that were it the divine plan to charge the consciences of men with remorse for their interest in Adam's transgression, the Holy Spirit would, in some instances, convince of this sin, as alone incurring eternal destruction; or at least, that among the many expressions of remorse recorded in scripture, a reference to this would not be altogether undiscoverable. The bearing of this

appeal to experience, on the subject before us, is obvious. Remorse for having deserved eternal banishment from God, is an indispensable ingredient of eternal torment; but remorse for the sin of Adam, imputed, is unknown to spiritual experience, and unexemplified in the recorded experience of ancient saints; yet infants have no other sin with which they can be chargeable, and for which they can thus suffer.

On this point, it is further remarkable, that the divine law never charges the sin of Adam upon his posterity, as their crime, meriting their eternal punishment; and that the gospel calling them to repentance, never enjoins repentance of that sin, as indispensable to deliverance from perdition. Upon any view of imputed guilt, which makes it alone the meritorious cause of eternal death, these facts appear unaccountable.

It is difficult, and perhaps might be pronounced impossible, to conceive, how the worm that never dies, should breed in a conscience, exculpating from personal crime. Equally does it surpass conception, how the rage of unbridled appetites and passions, should become a source of perpetual torment, a just retribution, to a being in whom, during his transient lodgment on a world of probation, those appetites and passions were never formed. Such a being might for ever bewail, as a great affliction, his relation to degraded man; but on what principle

could he charge upon himself, as a merited retribution, the loss of heavenly glory, and the endurance of everlasting burnings?

To those who consider eternal punishment an arbitrary infliction, it may be conceded, that, as to physical ability, the supreme Judge can, by his power over the consciousness of dependant beings, impress them with the idea of a sufficient identity between themselves and their disobedient parent, to render them fully responsible for his crime, as if it were their own; and thus he can produce in them all the pangs of perpetual remorse. But, assuredly, the God of truth will not delude with false impressions. Eternity is not the scene of delusion, either dreadful or delightful; but the empire of pure unveiled and everlasting truth.

But by some, the general accuracy of whose views on divine subjects appears unimpeachable,* it is maintained, that the punishment of sin is not an arbitrary infliction; that to produce all the horrors of eternal misery, the blessed God does but sustain the sinner in existence, leaving him to the consequences of his crimes, destitute of all hope for mercy. Of this opinion it shall only be remarked, that without resting upon it the stress of our present argument, it yet appears highly honour

* Stapffer, Pol. Theol. vol. I. cap. III. § 820, &c.—Dr. Williams-Note to Doddridge's Lect. 222.

able to the divine character, strictly consonant to the tenor of revelation, and capable of such an application to the case of deceased infants, as to render the supposition of their future misery altogether incredible.

Without any farther extending this article, to which the importance of the topic demanded peculiar attention, we may venture to conclude, that, whatever be the consequences resulting to deceased infants from their relation to fallen man, they do not appear, in virtue of that relation, to be certainly subjected to hopeless misery. Their descent from Adam, under the condition in which his transgression placed his posterity, does not form an insuperable barrier to our hope for their happiness beyond the grave. Whether a consideration of those sovereign constitutions, by which mankind both fell in Adam and are restored in Christ, may not supply a positive ground for that hope, demands our attention in a place more appropriate.

SECTION III.

The doctrine of Sovereign Election, no just cause of disquietude.

The ground of apprehension stated ;—concessions;—yet nothing conclusive against deceased infants. For election-supposes condemnation ;—not the cause of destruction to any; Rom. ix. 10-13 does not make against the argument;-God by his prerogative can bless the undeserving, but not injure the innocent ;-one of three conclusions must be true; carly death sometimes a mark of divine favour; -the disparity between the church militant and triumphant.

On this ground of disquietude, it is difficult, in the present stage of discussion, to reason at large; because much of the process, as well as the validity of the conclusion, must depend on such exhibitions of the divine character, and developments of the divine purposes, as will demand consideration hereafter. Still, however, various reflections occur, which, without anticipating to any considerable extent what will be more appropriately examined in another place, may perhaps suffice to shew, that the doctrine just announced, does not invincibly conclude against the position here advocated.

The difficulty arising from this great scriptural truth, may be thus represented. We know that personal election of God, the ultimate cause of salvation to any individual,—is sovereign and free;