cumcision; for then only they became branches of the vine which God had planted: much more then in the case of the child of Christians, by how much they are partakers of better promises, and our federal rite graffs us not merely into the body of a chosen people, but into that of the Son of God, not simply into the vine brought out of Egypt, but into Him who is "the True Vine." For in Christ there is no longer ceremonial holiness, nor covenant-holiness; since He who is the substance being come, the shadows have passed away; but real holiness cannot belong to any by their carnal birth, since thereby we are still "children of wrath:" it remains, then, (as elsewhere in the New Testament,) that it be actual holiness—the holiness actually conferred upon us in Baptism, as members of the Holy Son of God, and clothed with Him. The promise then, implied in this saying of St. Paul, has no limitation: if but one parent were within the covenant, then the children also are comprehended within it, and have, by virtue thereof, a title to all the privileges of it. The rule is given universally; "if any one have an unbelieving husband or wife—else were your children unclean, (ἀκάθαρτα) unpurified[1], out of the covenant, but now are they (all of them) holy." And so our Hooker[2] having said "that we are plainly taught by God, that the seed of faithful parentage is holy from the very birth," (which might seem as if he imagined that we brought with us into the world more than a title to be made holy by God's ordinance;) explains that he so means this, "not as if the children of believing parents were without sin, or grace from baptized parents derived by propagation, or God by covenant and promise tied to save any in mere regard of their parents' belief: yet seeing, that to all professors of the name of Christ, this pre-eminence above Infidels is freely given, that the fruit of their bodies bringeth into the world with it a present interest and right to those means, wherewith the ordinance of Christ is, that His Church shall be sanctified," &c.
- ↑ Hammond (Practical Catechism), notices this use of ἀκάθαρτον, Acts x. 14. 28. xi. 8. on this very subject of Christian privileges.
- ↑ B. 5. c. 60. §. 6. ed. Keble.
