my argument, to set forth the evils which proceed from an impure state of society. To the extermination of the wretched criminals themselves, who were living in the commission of the most odious and barbarous vices, it is not objected; but the comprehending their offspring in the same general order is said to be incompatible with the qualities of a Being essentially benevolent as well as just. To this it has been replied, that if the Deity spared the infant race in a pestilence or an earthquake, both of which are no doubt occurrences of his ordering, (if indeed we allow there is a God,) it might then have been expected that the children of the Canaanites would have been rescued from the common lot. God predisposes the physical causes of all those dreadful visitations by which a general carnage of the human race, infant as well as adult, is occasioned, be they earthquakes, inundations, pestilences, or famines. That, therefore, which it must be allowed he produces in various instances, there seems to be no absurdity in believing he may in one instance have commanded. But further, and more to our present purpose, it has never I believe in other cases been made the subject of regret, but rather (when the event was past) of congratulation, that the righteous or the innocent were "taken away from the evil to come "," were snatched from impending misery, wretchedness, or guilt, by the hand of death". Isaiah lvii. 1. In h Cicero, in speaking of Hortensius, says: "Sed for"tunatus illius exitus, qui ea non vidit cum fierent, quæ Sæpe enim inter nos impendentes "providit futura. 66 casus deflevimus. * 66 Sed illum videtur felicitas ipsius, qua semper est usus, ab eis miseriis quæ conse"cutæ sunt morte vindicasse *. Tacitus congratulates himself on the premature death of Agricola because he had been taken away from the approaching miseries of the state: "Non vidit Agricola ob66 sessam curiam, et clausum armis senatum, et eadem strage tot consularium cædes, tot nobilissimarum fœmina66 rum exsilia et fugas. Tu vero felix, Agri 66 "cola, non vitæ tantum claritate, sed etiam opportunitate "mortis, &c. t." Existence is no doubt a blessing: the argument applies only to an unavoidable state of misery or guilt: "Provida Pompeio dederat Campania febres * Brut. § 96. Tacit. Vit. Agric. c. 45. the corrupted state of society which existed among the Canaanitish nations what other prospect was there but that the children should all grow in those iniquities which had called down the heavy judgments of God on the fathers? The only choice, therefore, was, whether they should be taken away before or after they were corrupted. The objection would indeed go the length of depriving the Almighty of the power of sweeping a guilty race from the earth at any time, as there must always be an infant progeny in existence. But the grand inference which I would draw from this awful dispensation is, that, if such be the unavoidable consequence of social intercourse in human life, that not only the good must be corrupted by commerce with the bad, but the innocent must also necessarily be involved with the guilty in any judicial punishment inflicted by the hand or by the "Vicerunt: igitur fortuna ipsius et urbis *Juvenal, Sat. x. v. 283. |