Section 2.

PART 3.

ANSWER TO DR. TAYLOR’S SUPPLEMENT.

YOU subjoin to your book a very large Supplement, in answer to Dr. Jennings and Dr. Watts. All that they have advanced, I am not engaged to defend; but such parts only as affect the merits of the cause. You divide this part of your work into eight sections. The first treats OF IMPUTED GUILT.

AND here you roundly affirm, “No action is said in Scripture to be imputed to any person for righteousness or condemnation, but the proper act and deed of that person.” (Supplement, page 7.)

Were, then, the iniquities and sins which were put upon the scapegoat, his own “proper act and deed?” You answer, “Here was no imputation of sin to the goat. It was only a figurative way of signifying the removal of guilt from the penitent Israelites, by the goat’s going into the wilderness.” But how could it be a figure of any such thing, if no guilt was imputed to him? “Aaron is commanded to put the iniquities of Israel upon the scapegoat; (Leviticus 16:21;) and this goat is said to bear the iniquities of the people. (Verse 22.) This was plainly an imputation. Yet it could not possibly be an imputation of anything done by the animal itself. The effects also which took place upon the execution of the ordinance indicate a translation of guilt; for the congregation was cleansed, but the goat was polluted: The congregation so cleansed, that their iniquities were born away, and to be found no more; the goat so polluted that it communicated defilement to the person who conducted it into a land not inhabited.” (Theron and Aspasio.)

In truth, the scapegoat was a figure of Him “on whom the Lord laid the iniquities of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6.) “He bore our iniquity.” (Verse 11). “He bare the sin of many.” (Verse 12.) The Prophet uses three different words in the original; of which the first does properly signify the meeting together; the last, the lifting up a weight or burden. This burden it was which made him “sweat as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground.” “But iniquity and sin sometimes signify sufferings.” (Supplement, page 8, 9.) Yes, suffering for sin; the effect being put for the cause. Accordingly, what we mean by, “Our sins ‘were imputed to him,’ is, He was punished for them: ‘He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities.’ He, ‘who knew no sin,’ but what was thus imputed, ‘was made sin,’ a sin-offering, ‘for us.’” “It pleased the Lord” (your own words) “to bruise him, in order to the expiation of our Sins.” (Pages 10, 11.)

“But with regard to parents and their posterity, God assures us, children ‘shall not die for the iniquity of their fathers’” No, not eternally. I believe none ever did, or ever will, die eternally, merely for the sin of our first father.

“But the Scripture never speaks of imputing any sin to any person, but what is the act of that person.” (Pages 13, 14.) It was but now you yourself observed, that, by, “Our sins were imputed to Christ,” we mean, “He suffered for them.” Our sins, then, were imputed to Christ; and yet these sins were not the act of the person that suffered. He did not commit the sin which was thus imputed to him.

But “no just constitution can punish the innocent.” (Page 16.) This is undoubtedly true; therefore God does not look upon infants as innocent, but as involved in the guilt of Adam’s sin; otherwise death, the punishment denounced against that sin, could not be inflicted upon them. “It is allowed, the posterity of Ham and Gehazi, and the children of Dathan and Abiram, suffered for the sins of their parents.” It is enough. You need allow no more. All the world will see, if they suffered for them, then they were punished for them. Yet we do not “confound punishment with suffering, as if to suffer, and to be punished, were the same thing.” Punishment is not barely suffering, but suffering for sin: To suffer, and to be punished, are not the same thing; but to suffer for sin, and to be punished, are precisely the same.

If, therefore, the children of Dathan and Abiram suffered for the sins of their parents, which no man can deny, then they were punished for them. Consequently, it is not true that, “in the instances alleged, the parents only were punished by the sufferings of the children.” (Pages 17, 18.) If the children suffered for those sins, then they were punished for them. Indeed, sometimes the parents too were punished, by the sufferings of their children; which is all that your heap of quotations proves; and sometimes they were not. But, however this were, if the children suffered for their sins, they were punished for them.

It is not therefore “evident, that, in all these cases, children are considered, not as criminals involved in guilt, but as the enjoyments of their parents, who alone are punished by their sufferings.” (Page 18.) On the contrary, it is very evident that the children of Canaan were punished for the sin of Ham; and that the children of Dathan and Abiram were punished with death, as “involved in the guilt of their parents.”

“On the other hand, the virtues of an ancestor may convey great advantages to his posterity. But no man’s posterity can be rewarded for their ancestor’s virtue.” (Page 21.) The point here in dispute between Dr. Watts and you is, whether the thing, concerning which you are agreed, should be expressed by one term or another. You both agree, (and no man in his senses can deny,) that, in all ages, God has, on account of pious ancestors, given many blessings to their offspring. But he thinks these blessings should be termed rewards; (and so do all the world;) you say they should not. The fact is plain either way God does continually, and did in all ages, give numberless blessings to the children, on account of the piety of their fathers; and, it is certain, blessings given on account of virtue have been hitherto termed rewards, both by God and man.

You conclude this section: “Thus, it appears, the distinction between personal sin and imputed guilt is without any ground in Scripture.” (Page 22.) Just the contrary appears, namely, that guilt was imputed to the scapegoat, to the children of wicked parents, and to our blessed Lord himself, without any personal sin. The distinction, therefore, is sound and scriptural.

SECTION 2.

OF THE NATURE AND DESIGN OF OUR

AFFLICTIONS AND MORTALITY.

THAT God designs to bring good out of these is certain. But does this prove, they have not the nature of punishments? Did Adam himself suffer any affliction, any toil or pain? Doubtless he did, long before he returned to dust. And can we doubt but he received spiritual good from that pain? Yet it was a punishment still; as really such, as if it had consigned him over to everlasting punishment. This argument, therefore, is of no weight: “God draws good out of punishments; therefore they are no punishments at all.” However, then, the sufferings wherein Adam’s sin has involved his own posterity may “try and purify us, in order to future and everlasting happiness,” (page 23,) this circumstance does not alter their nature; they are punishments still.

Let “afflictions, calamities, and death itself, be means of improving in virtue,” (page 24,) of healing or preventing sin, this is no manner of proof that they are not punishments. Was not God able to heal or prevent sin, without either pain or death? Could not the Almighty have done this as easily, as speedily, and as effectually, without these, as with them? Why, then, did he not? Why did Adam’s sin bring these on his whole posterity? Why should one man suffer for another man’s fault? If you say, “To cure his own;” I ask,

1. What necessity was there of any suffering at all for this? If God intended only to cure his sin, he could have done that without any suffering. I ask,

2. Why do infants suffer? What sin have they to be cured thereby? If you say, “It is to heal the sin of their parents, who sympathize and suffer with them;” in a thousand instances this has no place; the parents are not the better, nor anyway likely to be the better, for all the sufferings of their children. Their sufferings, therefore, yea, and those of all mankind, which are entailed upon them by the sin of Adam, are not the result of mere mercy, but of justice also. In other words, they have in them the nature of punishments, even on us and on our children. Therefore, children themselves are not innocent before God. They suffer; therefore, they deserve to suffer.

And here another question arises, What benefit accrues to the brute creation from the sufferings wherein their whole race is involved through the sin of the first man? The fact cannot be denied; daily experience attests what we read in the oracles of God, that “the whole creation groaneth together, and travaileth in pain to this day;” a considerable part of it groans to God, under the wantonness or cruelty of man. Their sufferings are caused, or at least greatly increased, by our luxury or inhumanity; nay, and by our diversions! We draw entertainment from the pain, the death, of other creatures; — not to mention several entire species, which at present have such natural qualities, that we are obliged to inflict pain, nay, perhaps death, upon them, purely in our own defence. And even those species which are out of the reach of men, are not out of the reach of suffering. “The lions do lack and suffer hunger,” though they are, as it were, sovereigns of the plain. Do they not acknowledge this when, “roaring for their prey,” they “seek their meat from God?” And what shall we say of their helpless prey? Is not their lot more miserable still? Now, what benefits, I say, have these from their sufferings? Are they also “tried and purified thereby?” Do sufferings “correct their inordinate passions, and dispose their minds to sober reflections?” Do they “give them opportunity of exercising kindness and compassion in relieving each other’s distresses?” That I know not; but I know by this and a thousand proofs, that when man, the Lord of the visible creation, rebelled against God, every part of the creation began to suffer on account of his sin. And to suffering on account of sin, I can give no properer name than that of punishment.

“It was to reclaim offenders that an extraordinary power was exercised, either immediately by our Lord himself, or by his Apostles, of inflicting bodily distempers, and, in some cases, death itself.” (Page 25.) I do not remember any more than one single case, wherein one of the Apostles “inflicted death.” I remember no instance recorded in Scripture, of their “inflicting bodily distempers;” (the blindness inflicted on Elymas cannot be so termed, without great impropriety;) and certain I am, that our Lord himself inflicted neither one nor the other.