ath of God by reason of original and actual sin; also to tell
them the nature of God's wrath and the duration of misery, which if
they would conscientiously do, they would sooner learn their children
to pray than they do. The way that men learn to pray is by conviction
of sin, and this is the way to make our "sweet babes" do so too.'

'Sweet babes' is unworthy of Bunyan. There is little sweetness in a
state of things so stern as he conceives. He might have considered,
too, that there was a danger of making children unreal in another and
worse sense by teaching them doctrines which neither child nor man can
comprehend. It may be true that a single sin may consign me to
everlasting hell, but I cannot be made to acknowledge the justice of
it. 'Wrath of God' and such expressions are out of place when we are
brought into the presence of metaphysical laws. Wrath corresponds to
free-will misused. It is senseless and extravagant when pronounced
against actions which men cannot help, when the faulty action is the
necessary consequence of their nature, and the penalty the necessary
consequence of the action.

The same confusion of thought lies in the treatment of the kindred
subjects of Free-will, Election, and Reprobation. The logic must be
maintained, and God's moral attributes simultaneously vindicated.
Bunyan argues about it as ingeniously as Leibnitz himself. Those who
suppose that specific guilt attaches to particular acts, that all men
are put into the world, free to keep the Commandments or to break
them, that they are equally able to do one as to do the other, and
are, therefore, proper objects of punishment, hold an opinion which is
consistent in itself, but is in entire contradiction with facts.
Children are not as able to control their inclinations as grown men,
and one man is not as able to control himself as another. Some have no
difficulty from the first, and are constitutionally good; some are
constitutionally weak, or have incurable propensities for evil. Some
are brought up with care and insight; others seem never to have any
chance at all. So evident is this, that impartial thinkers have
questioned the reality of human guilt in the sense in which it is
generally understood. Even Butler allows that if we look too curiously
we may have a difficulty in finding where it lies. And here, if
anywhere, there is a real natural truth in the doctrine of Election,
independent of the merit of those who are so happy as to f