r that
did not act, then it lies against all that is of that nature.... If these
reasons are good, all the difference is this: that to bring a _great_
punishment on infants for Adam's sin, is a _great_ act of injustice, and
to bring a comparatively _smaller_ punishment is a smaller act of
injustice; but not, that this is not as truly and demonstrably an act of
injustice as the other."(183)

We hold this to be a solid and unanswerable argument; and we hold also,
that God can no more commit a small act of injustice than a great one.
Hence, in the eye of _reason_, there is no medium between rejecting the
whole of the imputation of Adam's sin, and ceasing to object against the
imputation of the whole of it, as inconsistent with the justice and
goodness of God. We may arbitrarily wipe out a portion of it in order to
relieve our _imagination_; but this brings no relief to the calm and
passionless reason. It may still the wild tumults of emotion, but it
cannot silence the voice of the intellect. Why not relieve both the
_imagination_ and the _reason_? Why not wipe out the whole dark film of
imputation, and permit the glad eye to open on the bright glory of God's
infinite goodness?

The wonder is, that when Edwards had carried out his logic to such a
conclusion, he did not regard his argument as a perfect _reductio ad
absurdum_. The wonder is, that when he had carried out his logic to the
position, that it might well consist with the justice of God to impute the
whole of Adam's sin to "poor little infants," as he calls them, and then
cause them to endure "eternal torments for it," his whole nature did not
recoil from such a conclusion with indescribable horror. For our part,
highly as we value logical consistency, we should prefer a little
incoherency in our reasoning, a little flexibility in our logic, rather
than bear even one "poor little infant" on the hard, unyielding point of
it into the torments of hell forever.

St. Augustine was the great founder of the doctrine of the imputation of
sin. But although he did more than any other person to give this doctrine
a hold upon the mind of the Christian world, it never had a perfect hold
upon his own mind. So far from being able to reconcile it with the divine
goodness, he could not reconcile it with his own goodness. For this
purpose, he employed the theory that all the posterity of Adam were, in
the most literal sense, already _in him_, and sinned in him--in his person;
and