be not exhausted, is by this time thoroughly convinced that the doctrine of infant damnation was a generally received doctrine among Christians prior to the time of Swedenborg. This extract is an important one, being from Wigglesworth's "Day of Doom," "a work," says a writer in the Christian Examiner, "repeatedly published in this country, and, according to Cotton Mather, in England; a work which was taught our fathers with their catechisms, and which many an aged person with whom we are acquainted can still repeat, though they may not have met with a copy since they were in leading strings; a work which was hawked about the country printed on sheets, like common ballads; and, in fine, a work which fairly represents the prevailing theology of New England at the time it was written, and which Mather thought might 'perhaps find our children till the day [of doom] itself arrives.'"—Vol. V., p. 537.
Wigglesworth was the minister of Malden, and a "fellow and tutor," as Cotton Mather calls him, in Harvard College. The "reprobate infants" are introduced by him at the Day of Doom, in the manner following:"
"Then to the bar all they drew near,
Who di'd in infancy ,
And never had or good or ba
Effected personally."
And the little "reprobates" are represented as closing their plea for mercy at the bar of God in these words:
