Children Are Not Punished for Parents’ Sins
Tell me the meaning of scriptures. One gem from that ocean is worth all the pebbles of earthly streams.—M'Cheyne. Infidel Objections to the Bible Answered. No. 6.
6. Children are Punished for the Sins of their Parents.—I am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children.—Ex. xx, 5. Children are Not Punished for the Sins of their Parents.—The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father.—Ezek. xviii, 20. We know of no better answer to this than is given by Dr. Nelson in his “Cause and Cure of Infidelity,” pp. 271–277, it being the substance of an actual conversation that occurred between a deist and a preacher of the gospel on this point. Deist. Another, and the strongest reason why I can never receive the religion you profess, is, that it speaks of visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. I have too much respect for my Creator to believe he will ever do this in any case. Preacher. Perhaps you did not notice that the verse does not speak of visiting the punishment due to the father upon the children. It is the iniquity of the fathers which God speaks of visiting upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. Deist. I do not believe that he would visit any thing of the father's upon the child, in any way or in any shape. I have a higher esteem for my Maker than this would amount to. I do not believe it, and I will not believe it. Preacher. You do believe it, for you see it all around you every day and every hour, and you consent to it, and you approve of it. Deist. I do not understand you, sir. Preacher. You may understand, if you will, for nothing is plainer in matter of fact. I knew a man, Mr. S——, who had one son, his only child. This man would not work. He would not humble himself to honest labor. He seemed to have an invincible aversion to bodily toil. Here his iniquity began, for the God of the Bible had ordered him to work. He must have food and raiment, and he frequented horse-races, and frequently made a considerable sum by betting. He would attend card-parties, and frequently filled his pockets from the losses of those less skillful than himself. In this way I knew him to spend nearly twenty years. His little son was very lively and healthful, and promisingly intellectual. As this active little boy grew up, he did not work any more than his father did, and no one expected he would. He loved best to go with his father from place to place, and from village to village. He mingled in different kinds of company, saw new faces continually, and all childish embarrassments wore away. He became skillful in riding fleet horses and in different games. His father's character became his. No one expected it to be otherwise. It was easier to teach him a love for loose amusements than for toil. The tavern-house revel was more attractive for the youth of sixteen, than was the corn-field employment. But mark you, the father was not happy. Indolence opens the door to other vices. He lost the respect of his fellow citizens. He loved intoxicating drinks; he became otherwise abandoned, and was miserable. His iniquity was punished much here in this life. But his son was unhappy, too. His father's character descended to him. God had declared in the hearing of all parents, that it is not his plan to prevent it. He became a practiser of the same sins which his father had loved. He became unhappy in proportion to his guilt. The iniquity of the father descended to the son. He followed the same course of idleness and profligacy as closely as his features followed those of his father in expression. If this, sir, had been the only case where the character and the iniquity of the father had become the son's over again, it would overturn your attempt to be wiser or more amiable than Omnipotence. But you know of cases all around you, and they are all over the earth, where children take after their fathers in their vices, and of course suffer as their fathers suffered, in proportion to their guilt. We will consider this case, when I have placed before you one of an opposite character. Mr. T——, whom you knew, was not poor; he possessed a valuable tract of land, and did not refuse to plough it. He earned his bread from day to day, although the sweat dropped from his brow while obtaining it. He had no time to go to the horse-race, for he would not neglect his harvest. You know how comfortable and quiet was all around him. He had the confidence of his relatives and friends. He seemed to be very happy. His sons all took after him. When not in the schoolhouse, he had them in the field. They now work as hard as he did, and begin to be as much respected. The father's character and his peace have descended to them. You know very well that the father could have taught them idleness as easily as he taught them industry, and God would not have prevented it. There are singular cases of exception to be seen in the process of every common plan, but they prove nothing. God has promised seed-time and harvest, and we have it. A few unseasonable weeks, or a failure of harvest, does not disprove the assertion that we have harvest. Winter is a cold season, and a warm day in January does not disprove that truth. Summer is a warm season, and a cold day in June does not falsify the declaration. That father could have taught his sons habits of mirth and revelry, as easily as he taught them months of toil, and God would not have interfered. By refusing to interpose coercively, he visits the evils of the fathers upon their offspring. If that man who was punished at W——n Circuit court for stealing—his father was notoriously dishonest, and all his neighbors knew it—if that man had spoken as follows to the jury and to the judge, what would have been their reply? “Fellow-citizens, I cannot see how I am to blame for stealing, for my father did so before me. I always loved it, and I always practised it. My father always preferred taking his neighbor's property to work, and I have only copied him. I cannot be to blame, for I was reared to dishonesty.” You know that the judge would not tell the jury to acquit, because he had shown his father to be also guilty, and to be the cause of his son's unloveliness. The murderer never is excused, even if his father practised it in his sight, so as to make him a murderer in heart from his earliest day. The iniquitous character of the father going down to the son and acting itself out there again, does not become more lovely because it was a garment worn before. Neither God nor man excuses it. God has warned parents in the hearing of heaven, earth, and hell, that this descent will take place, and the features of the soul be “visited” as certainly as the features of the body. I knew a father, who in habits of filthy debauch, had acquired disease which descended to his children, and they were born with feeble, unsound frames, incapable of meeting the hardships of life, and suffering with every morning's sun. Why do you not pretend to have too high an opinion of your Creator to believe that diseases are “visited” to the third and fourth generation? Go and tell physicians that you do not believe them, when they assert that many diseases are hereditary, because you have a more exalted view of your Maker than to suppose he would make things thus. Poor, innocent child, groaning there on account of the father's licentious and detestable indulgences. You might speak very pathetically and very zealously, and at last not be either as wise or as benevolent as the Creator, who has made things thus. But to go back again to moral disease, to that iniquity which does descend: when you know there are ten thousand cases all around you, where the son is more inclined to copy his father's vicious habits, than to follow virtue; when you know that all who fall into evil practices suffer for their character more or less; and this visiting of the iniquity upon the children God has never altered since he said he would not; why be trying to be wise, and to look lofty, and to disbelieve that which you have seen every day of your life when you mingled with society? The deist confessed that he had known idle fathers rear idle children, and that men disliked them for their worthlessness. He confessed that he had known evil-tempered, jealous, or envious parents have families that felt as they did, and were considered unlovely and hateful, in proportion to the amount of malignity which they had copied of their parents. He confessed that it did not excuse the criminal, in any court of justice on earth, to say that the murder, or the adultery, or whatever the crime might be, was copied of father or mother, who had acted it out before them. Finally, he confessed that if a father had succeeded in training a son in vice and hateful crime, so that this blackness of soul and monstrous deformity caused the suffering of its possessor for fifty years in this life, and then brought him to perish on a gibbet, perhaps it might forbid his joy in the next existence. On the same principle that if I may not take many thousand pounds unfairly, I may not take a single penny; on this principle, if a certain amount of unloveliness acquired in a given way, may detract from the happiness or cause the suffering of any one for half a century, it may do so much longer, for aught we know.