Think of the vast numbers that are swallowed up in the mighty waters by the rage of stormy winds and seas, which are roused to destroy mortals, and pronounce aloud the wrath of heaven. Review a little what immense multitudes have been swept away by the pestilence, or have had their nature and life worn out by the long and tedious agonies of famine? Would famine and pestilence, with all the dismal train of lingering horrors which attend them, have been ever made for innocent creatures, to have thus swept away whole nations of them, of every age and sex, men, women, and children, without distinction ?

Think yet again, what numbers of mankind have been crushed into misery and death, in their own dwellings, and buried there by earthquakes, or have had all their bones bruised, their limbs disjointed and broken, and their flesh painfully battered by the fall of houses, and been buried alive in the ruins of whole towns and villages, while their neighbours have been burned or drowned in multitudes, by the dismal eruptions of fire and water, or destroyed terribly by deluges of liquid fire, breaking out of the earth? Survey these scenes of horror, and then say, would a God of goodness and justice treat innocent creatures at this rate, or expose them to these formidable mischiefs?

Carry your thoughts over the seas to the country of cannibals and other savages, where by the custom of nations, thousands of their conquered enemies, or prisoners of war, are some times cruelly put to death, to pave the road to their own palace with their skulls, or they are offered in sacrifice to their idols; sometimes they are roasted in slow fires, as I before hinted, and tortured and eaten by their barbarous conquerors: Add to this all the former miseries, and then say, whether this world does not look like a province half forsaken of its gracious governor, or almost given up to mischief and misery.

Some perhaps will say here, it is easy to account for a multitude of these miseries, without any universal degeneracy or corruption of human nature. It is but a small part of mankind who are overwhelmed by earthquakes, who are drowned in the seas, who are destroyed by war or famine, who are racked with long and terrible distempers, who are eaten by savages, or put to death by the hands of violence and cruelty; and perhaps those who suffer peculiar afflictions are punished for their own personal iniquities. Answer. Take a just survey of all the persons who have fallen under these miseries, and there is not the least reason to conclude they have all been sinners above others. Do not the calamities of war, and famine, and pestilence, and earthquakes, and inundations, &c. spread promiscuously without distinction through a whole country at once, and involve the best and worst of men in the same misery and ruin? And is there any ground to imagine, that those spreading devastations make any distinc

tion between greater and lesser sinners? No, by no means. It is sufficiently evident that all persons are liable to them, and whole nations at once suffer by them. Such is the universal degeneracy of human nature, that wheresoever these calamities come, they find none innocent: and it is the general situation of degenerate mankind, under just displeasure of God that made them, which exposes them all to these destructions.

But to proceed in a survey of the miseries of mankind. Think of the innumerable common misfortunes which attend human life; look into the bills of mortality, observe what multitudes perish by these accidents in one city every week, and infer what a much larger number of these accidents injure the health, the ease, the limbs of mankind, and fill their lives with pain, though they are not brought immediately to the grave. Think of the mischiefs which are continually plotting and contriving in all the towns and villages of the world, whereby perhaps one half of the race of men try to defraud, circumvent, and do injury and mischief to their neighbours; and the bad and the good suffer promiscuously in this world in their possessions and properties, in their comforts of life, in their health, and in all that is dear to them. Take a view of these extensive and reigning vices and miseries, and then say, whether this world be not a part of the creation of God, which bears plain and signal tokens of the frowns and displeasure of its Maker.

It would add much to the heap of human misery, if we should consider the cutting sorrows which arise from the daily loss of our dearest comforts. What groans and heart-achs and wailings of the living surround the pillows of dying friends and dearer children? What symptoms of piercing and painful distress attend their remains when they are conveyed to the grave? And by such losses all the comforts of future life become disrelishing, and every new scene of sorrow is embittered with double gall. Let it be observed, that in the sorrows, miseries and deaths of mankind round the world, especially in the more civilized part of it, there is scarce one person sick, or in pain, miserable or dying, but several others sustain a considerable share of misery by the strong ties of nature, or of interest, the dear bonds of friendship, and the tender and sympathizing powers which are mingled in our composition. This diffuses a personal calamity through whole families, this multiplies human sorrows and miseries into an endless number, and makes us justly enquire, can all this be contrived to torment innocence and holiness, or to punish creatures who continue such as God made them at first?

It would still swell the load, if we bring in the many teazing vexations and cutting disappointments which arise from the falsehood of pretended friends, and from the cruelty of kindred,

from whom we expected nothing but benevolence and love, together with the everlasting disquietudes that are rising in some families hourly from little crossing occurrences of life.

Can this be a state of happiness, where we meet with perpetual contradiction to our opinions and to our wills, which awaken the soul too often into rage and impatience, and ruffle the spirits of most men? Add to all this the inward anguish that springs from all our own uneasy and unruly passions of every kind: And where is the breast that has not some of these uneasy passions born with it, and reigning in it, or at least frequently making their assaults upon our peace? Bring in here all the wrath and resentment kindled in the hearts of men, all the envy and malice that burns within it, all the imaginary fears and the real terrors of future distress coming upon us, all the rage and despair of lost blessings that were put within our hopes, and all the vicious and ungovernable ferments of animal nature, which torment the spirit all the day, and forbid our nightly repose. Would these things ever have happened if man had continued in favour with his Maker, and had not been almost abandoned to his own folly, and in a great measure given up to misery?

Suppose it should be objected here against all this reasoning, in some such manner as this: It is granted that men may make sorrows for themselves, and may be punished by their follies, if they chuse to create their own miseries: But let us compare together all the real necessary sorrows which any man suffers, and the comforts which he enjoys, and when we have put them into the balance, let us remember, that so far as these comforts reach, they will answer for an equal share of sorrows and calamities, and absolve the justice of God from treating his innocent creatures amiss. Then all the over-balancing sorrows may be esteemed but necessary even for an innocent race of beings to sustain, in a state of trial, in order to future rewards or punishments: And the great God well knows how to reward all that ever-balance of sufferings hereafter, which every man sustains here beyond the proportion of his comforts. In answer to this,

I would survey the sinful and wretched inhabitants of this world round the globe, and then humbly enquire, doth one quarter of mankind behave so well in this world in their state of trial, as to give any observing person reason to expect, that they shall ever partake of rewards hereafter? Is there found among mankind such a dutiful and obedient conduct towards God, or such a life of strict virtue and goodness towards their neighbour, as to entitle one fourth part of men to the rewards of futurity, and consequently to any equal recompence hereafter, for the former over-balance of their sorrows here? And if not, how then shall this same over-balance of calamities and miseries be ac

counted for? Itis confessed that it was inflicted on them as innocent creatures in a state of trial, and therefore justice requires that they should have a recompence for these over-balancing sorrows, which yet they are never likely to receive. Upon the whole therefore we cannot well impute the superior sorrows of mankind merely to such a state of probation; but they are rather to be accounted for as the effects of some universal degeneracy, and the just displeasure of the righteous Creator and Governor of this world. But to make this appear yet plainer, I proceed to the next consideration.

X. Not only those who are grown up in the practice of iniquity, who may be supposed to be punished for their own sins and follies, but even all mankind in their earliest infancy are under some tokens of the displeasure of their Maker, before they become actual and personal transgressors, before they know any thing of moral good or evil, or can come into a state of trial. In the very youngest hours of life, before children can be said to perform rational actions, or to commit actual sins, they are subject to a thousand miseries: which shews them to be a race of beings out of favour with their Maker, and under his displeasure even from their birth: For can we think a God of perfect goodness, wisdom and equity, would bring such infant-beings into existence, to feel such calamities in the complete innocence of spotless nature?

What anguish and pain are infants sometimes exposed to, even as they are coming into the world, and as soon as they are entered into it? What agonies await their birth? What numerous and acute maladies, what deplorable diseases are ready to attack them? What gripes, what convulsions of nature, what cutting anguish, what pangs and inward torments, which bring some of them down to death, as soon as they have seen the light of this world a few hours or days? And if they survive the first three or four months of danger, what unknown torture do they find in the breeding of their teeth, and other maladies of infancy, which can be told only by shrieks and tears, and that for whole days and nights together, while they are lingering on the very borders of death? What additional pains and sorrows do they sustain sometimes by the negligence or poverty of their mothers, and by the cruelty of nurses? What sore bruises and unhappy injuries, whereby many of them are brought down to the grave, either on a sudden, or by slow and painful degrees?

Do we not shudder with a sort of sympathy and compassion, when we read of children falling into the fire, and lying there in helpless screams till their limbs are burned off, or their lives expire in the flames? Or when they drop into scalding vessels of some boiling liquid, whereby they resign their souls in

extreme anguish? Are not all our tenderest powers shocked and pained when we hear of infants left on their couches, or in their cradles, by poor parents for a hour or two, while dogs or hogs have gnawed off their flesh from their bones, and they have been found in dying agonies and blood? And what shall we say of whole nations in older times, or the Hottentots in our age, who expose their children in the woods when they cannot or will not maintain them, to be torn and devoured by any savage beast that passes by? Are these little young creatures counted perfectly innocent and guiltless in the eyes of that God, who by his providence leaves them to be exposed to so dismal a fate?

Add to all this the common calamities in which these infants are involved, when fires, or earthquakes, or pestilence rage through a whole town or city, and multitudes of them being helpless perish with extreme pain. And there are a thousand other accidents that attend these little creatures, whereby their members or their natural powers receive dismal injuries, and perhaps they drag on life with blindness, deafness, lameness or distortion of body or limbs; sometimes they languish on to manhood, and sometimes to old age, under miseries and sore calamities, which began almost as soon as their being, and which are only ended by death.

Now as these sorrows and death cannot be sent upon them, in a way of correction for their personal and actual sins, for they have none, so neither are they sent for the trial of their virtue, or as any part of a moral state of probation; for they have no reason in exercise, no knowledge of good and evil, and are incapa ble of virtue, as well as vice, or any moral probation in their early infancy and state of ignorance; yet we see multitudes of these little miserable beings; and are they treated as the innocent harmless creatures of a God of love and compassion? Amidst all these surrounding scenes of danger and distress, do they look like young favourites of heaven? Or rather, do they not seem to be a little sort of criminals under some general curse and punishment?

If mankind had stood in their original innocence, surely their infant offspring would have entered into the world under some general word of blessing. The God who made the first parents of mankind must certainly have blessed them, in several other respects, as well as in saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth; Gen. i. 28. And their infants would have been born like little young angels, ever easy and smiling in a perfection of innocence, and in circumstances of pleasure: And they would have grown up by many little efforts of goodness to the fuller knowledge and love of their Maker, and the practice of every virtue, surrounded with the comforts and satisfactions