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the sin and error of his ways and living a life of holiness descend to his offspring by ordinary generation ?1 Then may children be at the same time born, and born again, and may with the first dawn of consciousness receive the regenerating influence of the Holy Spirit. And may we not

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depravity, of the sinful tendency which inheres in our nature. But is there not also a sense in which they are heirs of our grace? Is there not a sense in which goodness is hereditary as well as badness, in every sense, that is, in which moral qualities are heritable? Our iniquity passes upon them; but may we not also minister grace to them? Is the new life of the second Adam less potent than the old life of the first Adam? not this implied in the importance that is everywhere attached to pious parentage? Timothy is privileged by the unfeigned faith, not only of his mother, Eunice, but also of his grandmother Lois. Samuel, and Jeremiah, and John the Baptist, were consecrated from the womb. David makes it his boast and plea, O Lord, truly am I thy servant and the son of thy handmaid."(Rev. HENRY ALLON.) From various passages of Scripture we learn "that in the line of natural descent from godly parents there were immense advantages, in relation to godliness, secured to the children; that, in point of fact, that was originally intended to be the rule (which, indeed, I am persuaded is very much more the rule than we sometimes suppose, and which would be still more the rule if we availed ourselves of its operation more reverently and intelligently), viz., that, as in the case of Timothy, the faith that dwelt first in the grandparents should likewise reproduce itself in grandson and in son. A'godly seed' can mean nothing else than this, that the godliness of the children is, in some way or other, and to a greater or less degree, derived from, and dependent on, the godly antecedents of their parents. And that the children of believing parents do stand in some relation of special advantage to the kingdom of Heaven is most unmistakably asserted by the great apostle of the Gentiles." -(Rev. W. ROBERTS.)

"By an established constitution," says Dr. Hopkins, "parents convey moral depravity to their children. And if God has been pleased to make a constitution, and appoint a way, in His covenant of grace with man, by which pious parents may convey or communicate moral rectitude or holiness to their children, they, by using the appointed means, do it as really and effectually as they communicate existence to them. In this sense, therefore, they may convey and give holiness and salvation to their children." (System of Theology.) "Sin is transmissible, reversible. Why should not righteousness, under certain conditions, be so too ?"-(VINET.) "As children are made sinners and miserable by the parents without any act of their own, so they are delivered out of it by the free grace of Christ, upon a condition performed by their parents."-(RICHARD BAXTER.)

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"For aught that appears, regeneration may, in some initial and profoundly real sense, be the twin element of propagation itself. parentage may, in other words, be so thoroughly wrought in by the spirit of God as to communicate the seeds of a godly, just as it communicates the seeds of a depraved and disordered character. Nor is it any objection as respects the children, that, except a man be born again he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven; for, potentially, at least, they are thus born again, and so are as fit to be counted citizens of the kingdom as they are to be citizens of the state."-(Dr. BUSHNELL:

look forward to the time when the evils that have so long been transmitted as consequences of Adam's transgression shall have to give place to the benefits purchased for us by the death of Christ ?1 Then as righteousness comes to prevail on the earth shall the consequences of Adam's sin cease, and the children shall cease to be born with tendencies to evil, but only to what is good and right."

Christian Nurture.) "Perhaps no one can tell when they became such, and it may be that some initiating touch of grace began to work inductively in them, by a process too delicate for human observation, even from their earliest infancy, or from their baptismal day. For there is a nurture of grace as well as a grace of conversion."-(Ditto.)

1"If it be true that what gets power in any race by a habit or process of culture tends by a fixed law of nature to become a propagated quality, and pass by descent, as a property inbred in the stock, what is to

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be the effect of a thoroughly Christian fatherhood and motherhood, continued for a long time in successive generations of a family? What can it be but a general mitigation of the bad points of the stock, and a more and more completely inbred piety? The children of such a stock are born not of the flesh only, or the mere natural life of their parents; but they are born, in a sense most emphatic, of the Spirit also: for this parentage is differed, as we are supposing, age by age, from its own mere nature in Adam by the inhabiting grace of a supernatural salvation." (Dr. BUSHNELL.) "It is a great mistake to suppose that men and women such as are to be fathers and mothers are affected only in their souls by religious experience, and not in their bodies. On mere physiological principles it cannot be true, for the mind must temper the body to its own states and changes. Since the soul is acting itself always into and through the body, when it becomes a temple of the Spirit, the body also must be, just as the Scriptures explicitly teach, undergoing with the soul a remedial process in its tempers and humours, and prospering in heaven's order even as the soul prospereth."-(Ditto.) "In every age there have been individuals who, as men, have uniformly been actuated by the aims and impulses of the religious life; and who, having 'feared God from their youth,' or even been, as He says it is possible to be, 'sanctified from the womb,' have been saved the agonies of self-crucifixion by the early supremacy of inward principle, the culture of pure tastes, and the protecting hedge of virtuous habits. Of course, what has thus been a fact again and again in separate individuals can be conceived of as being a fact in society at large, and might even be a fact.”—(Rev. T. BINNEY.)

2"The necessity of your exertions on behalf of the young," says Dr. T. Brown, addressing Sabbath-school teachers, "still continues; but that necessity will not always exist. By your efforts, combined with the instructions of pious parents, and devout masters, and faithful ministers, and zealous missionaries, a new era shall shortly dawn on the world. The ancient prophecy shall be fulfilled: after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws in their inward parts, and write them in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour and every man his brother, saying,, know the Lord; for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the

Then will Christ indeed reign on the earth. No doubt, this view of what we may term hereditary grace militates against a commonly received doctrine of original sin, which holds that, not merely the consequences, but the guilt or sinfulness of Adam's transgression passes to the entire human race. God is regarded as having entered into a covenant with Adam, as representing, not only himself, but all his posterity in terms of which they were to be made partakers with him in the fruits of his obedience, and, on the other hand, were to be sharers along with him in the

greatest of them.'" "Many of us have no difficulty in saying that mankind are born sinners. They may just as truly and properly be born saints. It requires the self-active power to be just as far developed to commit sin as it does to choose obedience."-(Dr. BUSHNELL.)

1 "In this view it is to be expected, as the life of Christian piety becomes more extended in the earth, and the Spirit of God obtains a living power in successive generations more and more complete, that finally the race itself will be so thoroughly regenerated as to have a genuinely populating power in faith and godliness.-(Dr. BUSHNELL.)

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2" Many writers declare that, since no man can continue in perfect obedience, therefore the whole race, without exception, is labouring under a curse." (E. C. TOPHAM.) "They (our first parents) being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this (their) sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by ordinary generation. (Westminster Confession of Faith.) "Every sin, both original and actual, being a transgression of the righteous law of God, and contrary thereto, doth in its own nature bring guilt upon the sinner."-(Ditto.) This (Adam's) sin of breaking the covenant of works is our sin in the whole compass and extent of it. That sin, with all the ingredients and aggravations of it, as is said, is as really your own sin as the lies ye have made with your own tongue and the profane oaths you have sworn with your own mouth. It is not ours in its effects only; as a father's sin in riotously spending his estate reaches his whole family, reducing them to poverty and want. Though the effects of that riotous spending, the poverty, misery, and want be theirs; yet the riotous spending is the father's only. But so it is not in this case. It is true the effects of it, the sinful and penal evils following this sin, are ours; we see them and feel them, and the most stupid groan under them; but the sin itself is ours too; and the guilt of it is the fault of it is ours."-(Rev. T. BOSTON: Covenant of Works.) "We know there has been a theory which affirms that we are one with Adam-that we so existed in his loins as to act with him-that our wills concurred with his will; that his action was strictly and properly ours; and that we are held answerable at the bar of justice for that deed, just as A. B. at fifty is responsible for the deed of A. B. at twelve. With this theory we confess we have no sympathy, and we shall dismiss it with saying that, in our view, Christianity never teaches that men are responsible for any sin but their own; nor can they be guilty or held liable to punishment, in the proper sense of that term, for conduct other than that which has grown out of their own wills."-(ALBERT BARNES.)

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guilt of his disobedience.1 In this view every descendant of Adam must of necessity be born in a state of guilt, and his turning to God must be a deliberate act entered into after he has reached the years of discretion, — a new covenant, in fact. Strange as it may seem, they believe in, or at least admit the possibility of, children who die in infancy being regenerated and saved, and yet, if they live to grow up, they cannot be regarded as the family of God till they have undergone some conscious and manifest change.2

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1 "The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation sinned in him and fell with him in his first transgression.' (Shorter Catechism.) "The sum of the covenant of works or of the law is this:'If thou do all that is commanded, and not fail in any point, thou shalt be saved; but if thou fail thou shalt die."-(Confession of Faith.) Does not this very statement do away with any idea of guilt attaching to man, merely on account of Adam's sin? "Let none imagine that the covenant of works, being broken by Adam, was laid by as an useless thing which men were no more concerned in. The covenant itself stands firm still in all the parts of it. The promise of it stands still in perfect obedience, so that if any could answer the demands of that covenant, he should have the promised life."-(Rev. T. BOSTON: Covenant of Works.) "While the principle of representation, as lying at the foundation of God's treatment of mankind, first in Adam and then in Christ, is absolutely vital, and while the essential features of a covenant, even in the current sense of the term, are to be found in God's treatment of men under both these heads, there are some respects in which the application of the word 'covenant,' as ordinarily understood, to these divine transactions is apt to mislead; and to shut up all Biblical theology within these two ideas will be found injurious to a natural and unforced interpretation of important portions of Scripture, and to a comprehensive view of Bible truth as a whole."-(Dr. D. BROWN: Life of Prof. Duncan.) "I do not maintain the federal headship of Adam, as it is called, or the imputation of his sin to his posterity, and this doctrine I have always_ considered, and do still consider, as the foundation of that system. I believe we have received from our first parents, together with various outward ills, a corrupt and irregular bias of mind; but, at the same time, it is my firm opinion that we are liable to condemnation only for our own actions, and that guilt is a personal and individual thing."-(ROBERT HALL.) 'It was not possible for Butler, with statements then made of the doctrines of grace, to carry out his argument, and give it its true bearing on those doctrines. When they told of imputing the sin of one man to another, and of holding that other to be personally answerable for it, it is no wonder that such minds as that of Butler recoiled, for there is nothing like this in nature."—(ALBERT BARNES on Butler's Analogy.)

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2 "What would we think of Christianity if it resembled a system which, were it consistent with itself, would exclude children dying in infancy from all participation of the blessings of salvation, and would confine these to persons arrived at adult years, and who have personally made a

Christ is the second Adam, and as such comes in the place of the first, and is entitled to the same rights and privileges.' 1 He too is a federal representative, communicating to his

profession of faith in Jesus Christ? . . . That our Saviour's doctrine respecting the necessity of regeneration refers to adults and not to infants is assertion, not proof-and assertion which must be regarded as totally inadmissible till it be proved that the original corruption of human nature is confined to Adam's adult posterity, and has no existence in the mind of an infant."-(Rev. Dr. T. BROWN: Sermons.) "Even those who refuse to recognize children as members of the Church of Christ upon earth seem to have no objection to regard them as the proper subjects of Christ's everlasting kingdom in heaven. We shall not pretend to explain, for we do not profess to understand, on what principles of consistency they concede this. We merely state the fact, which is not without its bearing on the general argument."-(Ditto.) "If the Church membership of infants and little children under the patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations cannot be denied or disputed, in what passage of the New Testament is it asserted or implied that children are now deprived of this high privilege?"—(Ditto.) "Can any be saved except those who voluntarily and intelligently believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? Most assuredly they can! One half the human race die in infancy, before the child knows its right hand from its left; and is the blessed truth of their salvation to be annihilated; or, falling, like sparks, through the lurid air of hell, shall we believe that they burn for ever? Does not universal Christendom believe that they go straight, in the bosom of angels, to their Father's kingdom ?" -(H. W. BEECHER.) "Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how He pleaseth."-(Confession of Faith.) The Church of England teaches that it is certain by God's Word that children which are baptized, dying before they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved." "I have always believed in the salvation of infants. . . . I do not believe that on this earth there is a single professing Christian holding the damnation of infants, or if there be, be must be insane, or utterly ignorant of Christianity." -(Rev. C. H. SPURGEON.) "What would we think of Christianity if it had made no provision for those myriads of infants and little children who annually die without ever being capable of a personal faith in the Saviour?"-(Rev. Dr. T. BROWN.) "If he dies in infancy God may, it is true, find some way, possibly, to save him; but if he stays among the living, he cannot be a Christian till he is older."—(Dr. BUSHNELL.)

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"It is the glory of genuine Christianity that it remedy extensive as the disease of our nature; a salvation of equal extent with the misery which sin has produced. . . . The corruption of our nature is universal. It is coeval with our very existence. It is communicated to us in our formation in the womb. We were shapen in iniquity, and in sin did our mothers conceive us.' Now, if Adam was the 'figure of him that was to come,' i.e., of our Lord Jesus Christ, and if the effects of Adam's disobedience extend to infants as well as to adults, to little children as well as to men mature in knowledge and years, every rule of analogy and reasoning must lead us to believe that the salvation of Christ must extend to infants and children equally as the effects of the fall. . . . Why may not parents be the medium of transmitting to their offspring spiritual blessings as well as temporal advantages?"-(Dr. THOS. BROWN: Sermons.)

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