light of these _reasons_ soon fades from his
recollection; and, like all who have gone before him, when he comes to
contemplate the subject from another point of view, he declares that the
reasons of the thing he has endeavoured to explain, are hid from the human
mind in the profound depths of the divine wisdom.

If we would realize, then, that God sincerely desires the salvation of all
men, we must plant ourselves on the truth, that holiness, which is of the
very essence of salvation, cannot be wrought in us by an extraneous force.
It is under the guidance of this principle, and of this principle alone,
that we can find our way out from the dark labyrinth of error and
self-contradiction, in which others are involved, into the clear and
beautiful light of the gospel, that God "will have all men to be saved,
and come unto a knowledge of the truth." It is with the aid of this
principle, and of this alone, that we may hear the sublime teachings of
the divine wisdom, unmingled with the discordant sounds of human folly.

Section II.

The sufferings of the innocent, and especially of infants, consistent with
the goodness of God.

By the Calvinistic school of divines it is most positively and
peremptorily pronounced that the innocent can never suffer under the
administration of a Being of infinite goodness. They cannot possibly allow
that such a Being would permit one of his innocent creatures to suffer;
but they can very well believe that he can permit them both to sin and to
suffer. Is not this to strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel?

Having predetermined that the innocent never suffer, they have felt the
necessity of finding some sin in infants, by which their sufferings might
be shown to be deserved, and thereby reconciled with the divine goodness.
This has proved a hard task. From the time of Augustine down to the
present day, it has been diligently prosecuted; and with what success, we
have endeavoured to show. The series of hypotheses to which this effort
has given rise, are, perhaps, as wild and wonderful as any to be found in
the history of the human mind. We need not again recount those dark dreams
and inventions in the past history of Calvinism. Perhaps the hypothesis of
the present day, by which it endeavours to vindicate the suffering of
infants, will seem scarcely less astonishing to posterity, than those
exploded fictions of the past appear to this generation.

Acco