Others insisted, that unbaptized infants would be condemned to become philosophers, and turn out the authors of great discoveries. This may seem a terrible damnation to some persons; but, for our part, if we had been of that famous council, it is likely we should have been in favour of this decree. As the most agreeable punishment we could imagine, we should have [pg 264] been for condemning them, like the fallen angels of Paradise Lost, to torment themselves with reasonings high,—
“Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute.”
And if any of them had been found to possess no very great aptitude for such speculations, then, rather than they should find “no end in wandering mazes lost,” we should have condemned them to turn poets and “build the lofty rhyme.”
So completely did the spirit of a blind exegesis triumph over the light of reason in the time of Augustine, that even Pelagius and his followers excluded unbaptized infants from the kingdom of heaven, because our Saviour had declared that a man could not enter therein, except he be born of water and of the Spirit. It is true, they did not banish them into “the fire prepared for the devil and his angels,” nor into Limbo, nor into dark holes of the earth; on the contrary, they admitted them to the joys of eternal life, but not into the kingdom of heaven.[187] Thus, the Pelagians brought “poor little infants” as near to the kingdom of heaven as possible, without doing too great violence to the universal orthodoxy of their time.
But as we cannot, like the Church of Rome, determine the fate of infants by a decree, we must take some little pains to ascertain how it has been determined by the Supreme Ruler of the world. For this purpose we shall first show, that there is suffering in the world which is not a punishment for sin, and then declare the great ends, or final causes, of all natural evil.
Section IV.
The true ends, or final causes, of natural evil.
We have often wondered that grave divines should declare that there could be no natural evil, or suffering, under the administration of God, except such as is a punishment for sin in the person upon whom it is inflicted. We have wondered, that in declaring none but a tyrant could ever permit the innocent to suffer, they have entertained no fears lest they might strengthen the cause of atheism. For if it be impossible to justify the character of God, except on the principle that all [pg 265] suffering is merited on account of sin in the object of it, then it is easy to see, that the atheistical argument against the goodness of God is unanswerable. The atheist might well say: “Do we not see and know that the whole animal creation suffers? Now for what sin are they punished? The inferior animals, you will admit, are not capable of committing actual sin, any more than infants are; and Adam was not their federal head and representative. Hence, unless you can show for what sin they are punished, you must admit that, according to your own principles, God is a tyrant.” How Dr. Dick, or Dr. Dwight, or President Edwards, or Calvin, would have answered such an argument, we cannot determine. For although they all assume that there can be no suffering under the good providence of God, except it be a punishment for sin in the object of it, yet, so far as we know, they have not made the most distant allusion to the suffering of the inferior animals. Indeed, they seem to be so intently bent on maintaining the doctrine of the imputation of sin to infants, that they pay no attention, in the assumption of the above position, either to the word of God, or to the great volume of nature spread out before them.