Page:Short illustration of the commission given by Jesus Christ to his apostles.pdf/12

 But the Apostle had no such thing in his eye; nor would this sense of the passage have suited his purpose, or have satisfied the scruples of the believing Corinthians. Their question was not—Are our children possessed of new covenant holiness, and so entitled to baptism? but (as appears from the answer) it was this — May we lawfully retain our unbelieving wives, or must we put them away, as Old Israel were obliged to do by the law of Moses? To this he answers, "If any brother hath a wife that believeth not and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away," &c. And he gives this reason for it, "For the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband,"—This of the unbelieving wife to the believer, being opposed to the legal uncleanness of an alien to a Jew, must relate purely to the marriage relation, and signify that she was a lawful wife to him, even as the meats formerly held unclean by the law of Moses were now sanctified to him, or made lawful for his use, And what other sanctification or holiness can we suppose an unbeliever, while such, capable of? He farther observes, that unless their unbelieving wives were thus sanctified, their children would also be unclean. The of the children being stated as a consequence of the supposed unlawfulness of the unbelieving party, must necessarily signify {{sc|illegitimacy{{; for though they were begotten in marriage, yet