Wesley Corpus

Why should one man suffer for another man's fault? If you say, “To cure his own;” I ask, 1. What necessity was there of any suffering at all for this? If God intended only to cure his sin, he could have done that with out any suffering. I ask, 2. Why do infants suffer? What sin have they to be cured thereby? If you say, “It is to heal the sin of their parents, who sympathize and suffer with them; ” in a thousand instances this has no place; the parents are not the better, nor anyway likely to be the better, for all the sufferings of their children. Their sufferings, therefore, yea, and those of all mankind, which are entailed upon them by the sin of Adam, are not the result of mere mercy, but of justice also. In other words, they have in them the nature of punishments, even on us and on our child ren. Therefore, children themselves are not innocent before God. They suffer; therefore, they deserve to suffer. And here another question arises, What benefit accrues to the brute creation from the sufferings wherein their whole race is involved through the sin of the first man? The fact cannot be denied; daily experience attests what we read in the oracles of God, that “the whole creation groaneth together, and tra vaileth in pain to this day;” a considerable past of it groans to God, under the wantonness or cruelty of man. Their sufferings are caused, or at least greatly increased, by our luxury or inhu manity; nay, and by our diversions ! We draw entertainment from the pain, the death, of other creatures;--not to mention several entire species, which at present have such natural quali ties, that we are obliged to inflict pain, nay, perhaps death, upon them, purely in our own defence. And even those species which are out of the reach of men, are not out of the reach of suffer ing. “The lions do lack and suffer hunger,” though they are, as it were, sovereigns of the plain. Do they not acknowledge this when, “roaring for their prey,” they “seek their meat from God?” And what shall we say of their helpless prey? Is not their lot more miserable still? Now, what benefits, I say, have these from their sufferings?