He is a respecter of persons. He has not the same rule for all men. He
starts men unequally in the race of life--some heavily weighted with
their father's sins and misfortunes, some helped in every way by their
father's virtue and good fortune--and then He expects them all to run
alike. God is not just and equal. And then some go on,--men who think
themselves philosophers, but are none--to say things concerning God of
which I shall say nothing here, lest I put into your minds foolish
thoughts, which had best be kept out of them.
But, some of you may say, Is it not so after all? Is it not true? Is
not God harder on some than on others? Does not God punish men every day
for their father's sins? Does He not say in the Second Commandment that
He will do so, and visit the sins of the fathers upon the children to the
third and fourth generation; and how can you make that agree with what
Ezekiel says,--"The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father." My
dear friends, I know that this is a puzzle, and always has been one.
Like the old puzzle of God's foreknowledge and our free will, which seem
to contradict each other.
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