Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/118

114 It may perhaps be supposed, that infants, dying such, and then growing up into the angelic state of perfection, are pure from all evil, seeing they had not committed actual sins in the world, like adults. But this is not the case: for they are tainted with hereditary corruptions and perverse inclinations, as well as others; and, if left to themselves, would rush into evils of every kind. It is by the divine mercy and power of the Lord alone, that they, in common with other angels, are kept from evil, and preserved in good. And should any of them for a moment lose sight of their dependence on him, and entertain a false conceit of their own righteousness and merit, as though they possessed any good of themselves, and not from the Lord, they would soon be convinced of their error, by being left for a while to their own hereditary evils. By this experience they would see and acknowledge themselves to be impure by nature, but delivered from hell solely by divine mercy; and being thus humbled in their own estimation, they would again be received into the society of angels, to which they belonged. That such change of state does really take place at times, there is good reason to believe; and there cannot be a doubt, but it is permitted for the sake of their further purification, and that they may be thereby qualified for the attainment of still higher degrees of angelic perfection.

It is highly probable, that such infants, as die in the early stages of their existence, have no recollection whatever of the world in which they were born; but that they consider themselves as natives of heaven, being ignorant of every other kind of birth than what is spiritual, and regarding the Lord alone as their Parent. In consequence of their heavenly education, and freedom from many gross affections and thoughts, which others have contracted in the natural