Wesley Corpus

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 suffer ing, 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.