Just so it is in infants: hell was not made for man, but for devils; and therefore it must be something besides mere nature that can bear any man thither: mere nature goes neither to heaven or hell.
And how came the devils there? If it be hard to explain how Adam fell; how much more hard to solve how purely spiritual beings could fall? And nature! What? so much of nature, and no kind of attempt at a definition of the word? Pray what is nature?
Ib.
p. 371.
I do not say that we, by that sin (original) deserved that death, neither can death be properly a punishment of us, till we superadd some evil of our own; yet Adam's sin deserved it, so that it was justly left to fall upon us, we, as a consequent and punishment of his sin, being reduced to our natural portion.
How? What is this but flying to the old Supra-lapsarian blasphemy of a right of property in God over all his creatures, and destroying that sacred distinction between person and thing which is the light and the life of all law human and divine? Mercy on us! Is not agony, is not the stone, is not blindness, is not ignorance, are not headstrong, inherent, innate, and connate, passions driving us to sin when reason is least able to withhold us, — are not all these punishments, grievous punishments, and are they not inflicted on the innocent babe?
not this the result infused into the
milk not mingled
of St. Peter;