But why is it any worse for children to be damned in consequence of Adam’s sin than for adults to be damned? Orthodoxy assures us that in consequence of Adam’s sin we are born depraved. Dr. Duffield, stating and defending the doctrines of the New School Presbyterian Church (Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1863), says that Adam subjected his posterity to such a loss that they are born without any righteousness, are exposed to the consequences of his transgression, and all become sinners as soon as they are capable of it. He quotes with approbation from a protest of the New School minority, in the General Assembly of 1837 (which he calls a document of great historic value), an assertion that “by reason of the sin of Adam, the race are treated as if they had sinned;” and from another document of the same school which says, that “we are all born with a tendency to sin, which makes it morally certain that we shall do so.” Now, we do not see why it is any worse to send infants to hell because of this depraved nature, than to send grown persons there who have sinned in consequence of possessing such a depraved nature. If it be said that adults have had an opportunity to repent, and have not accepted it, we reply, that to the mass of mankind no such opportunity is offered; that, where it is offered, no one has the power to accept it, except he be one of the elect; and that at all events, since infants are sure to be saved, and a very large proportion of adults are very likely to be lost, _death in infancy is the most desirable thing possible_. According to this doctrine, child-murder becomes almost a virtue. The radical difficulty in all these theories consists in refusing to apply to God the same rules of justice which we apply to man. To do so implies no irreverence, but the highest reverence. There is nothing more honorable to the Almighty than to believe him to be actuated by the same great principles of right which he has written in our conscience and heart. Those laws of eternal justice, so deeply engraven on the fleshly tables of the heart, are a revelation of the character of God himself. If we think to honor him by rejecting these intuitions of the reason, and by substituting for this divine idea of a God of justice that of a being of arbitrary will, who is under no obligations to his creatures, we deeply dishonor the Almighty and fatally injure our own character. From this perverted view of God comes a cynical view of man. When we make _will_ supreme in God, we legitimate all tyranny and contempt from man to man. Then comes the state of things described by Shakespeare:—