And, as they inherit the corruption of Adam, so do they also his guilt and punishment. Death, we know, was the penalty of Adam's transgression ; "In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." But children who have never sinned in their own persons, are subjected to death : we see little new-born infants oppressed with sickness, and racked with pain, and cut off by an untimely stroke of death, For whose sin are they thus punished ? Their own ? They are not capable of actual sin. It is for Adam's sin therefore that they are punished": and that indisputably proves, that they are, as they are represented in our text, " children of wrath."
We do not say that children, dying before they have com- mitted actual sin, are consigned over to everlasting death : we hope, and believe, that God does, for Christ's sake, extend his mercy to them : but this alters not the case at all : we consider only what they are in themselves, and what they deserve at God's hands, and to what, as fallen creatures, they are doomed by God's righteous law : the relief which may be afforded them by the Gospel is not the present subject of our consideration : our present position which we are to establish, and which we think we have fully established, is, that all, as born into the world, are " children of wrath."]
We will now endeavour to,
III. Suggest a suitable improvement of the subject —
Surely we may see from hence —
1. In what a deplorable condition are all they who are yet in a state of nature —
[Children of wrath were they born, and children of wrath have they continued to the present hour. We know indeed how strenuously it is asserted by many, that baptism and re- generation are the same thing, and that to look for a new nature in conversion is unnecessary. But we would ask every parent here present, have you invariably found that your children, from the moment that they were baptized, put away their evil dispositions, and instantly became new creatures ? Is it even generally found, that this change takes place at bap- tism? I might almost proceed to ask, did you ever see this change so wrought by baptism, that you could not do otherwise than refer it to baptism as the means which God made use of for that end ? We do not presume to say, that God never does confer a new heart in baptism ; but we say, that if that be the usual, and still more the constant, means of regenera- tion to the children of men, it is very extraordinary that the change wrought is so rarely visible, that, if it were undeniably
n Rom. v. 12, 14. v2