e author himself of having assumed positions and made confident
assertions, "because they agree with his system."

"We say, then," says Dr. Dick, "that by his sin his posterity became
liable to the punishment denounced against himself. They became guilty
through his guilt, which is imputed to them, or placed to their account;
so that they are treated as if they had personally broken the covenant."
Thus all the posterity of Adam, not excepting infants, became justly
obnoxious to the "penalty of the covenant of works,--death, temporal,
spiritual, and eternal." Now, we would suppose that this scheme of
imputation is attended with at least as great a difficulty as the doctrine
that the innocent do sometimes suffer under the good providence of God.
Indeed, the author does not deny that it is attended with difficulties,
which have never been answered. In regard to the imputation of sin, he
says: "Candour requires me to add, that we are not competent fully to
assign the reasons of this dispensation. After the most mature
consideration of the subject, it appears _mysterious_ that God should have
placed our first parent in such circumstances, that while he might insure,
he might forfeit, his own happiness and that of millions of beings who
were to spring from his loins. We cannot tell why he adopted this plan
with us and not with angels, each of whom was left to stand or fall for
himself."(167) Now, when it is affirmed that the innocent may suffer for
wise and good purposes, why is all this candour and modesty forgotten? Why
is it not admitted, "It may be so;" "We cannot tell?" Why is the fact, of
which these writers so often and so eloquently remind us, that the human
intellect is a poor, blind, weak thing, quite unfit to pry into mysteries,
then sunk in utter oblivion, and a tone of confident dogmatism assumed?
Why not act consistently with the character of the sceptic or the
dogmatist, and not put on the one or the other by turns, according to the
exigencies of a system?

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 impo