s in our
Prayer-books for an hour or two together sometimes without sense of
weariness.

I did not express myself clearly about what I think a false topic
insisted on so frequently in consolatory addresses on the death of
Infants. I know something like it is in Scripture, but I think humanly
spoken. It is a natural thought, a sweet fallacy to the Survivors--but
still a fallacy. If it stands on the doctrine of this being a
probationary state, it is liable to this dilemma. Omniscience, to whom
possibility must be clear as act, must know of the child, what it would
hereafter turn out: if good, then the topic is false to say it is
secured from falling into future wilfulness, vice, &c. If bad, I do not
see how its exemption from certain future overt acts by being snatched
away at all tells in its favor. You stop the arm of a murderer, or
arrest the finger of a pickpurse, but is not the guilt incurred as much
by the intent as if never so much acted? Why children are hurried off,
and old reprobates of a hundred left, whose trial humanly we may think
was complete at fifty, is among the obscurities of providence. The very
notion of a state of probation has darkness in it. The all-knower has no
need of satisfying his eyes by seeing what we will do, when he knows
before what we will do. Methinks we might be condemn'd before
commission. In these things we grope and flounder, and if we can pick up
a little human comfort that the child taken is snatch'd from vice (no
great compliment to it, by the bye), let us take it. And as to where an
untried child goes, whether to join the assembly of its elders who have
borne the heat of the day--fire-purified martyrs, and torment-sifted
confessors--what know we? We promise heaven methinks too cheaply, and
assign large revenues to minors, incompetent to manage them. Epitaphs
run upon this topic of consolation, till the very frequency induces a
cheapness. Tickets for admission into Paradise are sculptured out at a
penny a letter, twopence a syllable, &c. It is all a mystery; and the
more I try to express my meaning (having none that is clear) the more I
flounder. Finally, write what your own conscience, which to you is the
unerring judge, seems best, and be careless about the whimsies of such a
half-baked notionist as I am. We are here in a most pleasant country,
full of walks, and idle to our hearts desire. Taylor has dropt the
London. It was indeed a dead weight. It has got in the Slough of
De