If we ask, why infants are exposed to death, we are told, that it is a punishment for Adam’s sin imputed to them. We are told that this _must_ be so; since “none but the guilty ever suffer under the administration of God,” who is not an arbitrary and cruel tyrant to cause the innocent to suffer. Why then, we ask, does he impute sin to them? To this it is replied, “We cannot tell.” No wonder; for if there must always be antecedent guilt to justify God in imposing evil upon his subjects, then there can be no reason for such a dispensation for imposing the tremendous evil of the imputation of sin. The advocates of it themselves have laid down a principle, which shows it to be without a reason. Hence they may well say, “We cannot tell.” Thus suffering is justified by the imputation of guilt; the imputation of guilt by the divine constitution; and the divine constitution, by nothing! If this is all that can be done, would it not have been just as well to have begun, as well as ended, in the divine constitution of things? But, no! even the most humble of men must have some explanation, some little mitigation of their difficulties, if it be only to place the world upon the back of an elephant, the elephant upon the back of a tortoise, and the tortoise upon nothing. It seems to be inconceivably horrible to Dr. Dick, and others of his school, that the innocent should ever be made to suffer under the providence of God; but yet they earnestly insist that the same good providence plunges the whole human race—infants and all—into unavoidable guilt, and then punishes them for it! To say that the innocent may be made to suffer is monstrous injustice—is horrible; but to say that they are made sinners, and then punished, is all right and proper! To say that the innocent can suffer under the administration of God, is to shock our sense of justice, and put out the light of the divine goodness; but it is all well if we only say that the punishment due to Adam’s sin is made, by the same good administration, to fall upon all his posterity _in the form of moral evil, and that then they are justly punished for this punishment_! Alas, that the minds of the great and the good, born to reflect the light of the glorious gospel of God upon a darkened world, should be so sadly warped, so awfully distorted, by the inexorable necessities of a despotic system! Section II. The imputation of sin not consistent with the goodness of God.