More proofs of infants church-membership and consequently their right to baptism, or, A second…

SECT. LXIII, to LXX.

R. B. Note also, that as God had thus cast out Cain, and supplied Abel's room by Seth, and had given each of them posterity; so we find him in a special manner registering the successors of the righteous, and putting two titles on these two distinct generations, calling some the sons of God, and others the daughters of men, Gen. 6.2. Supposing that you reject the old conceits that these sons of God were Angels that fell in love with women, the current ordinary exposition I think will stand, that these were the progeny of Seth, and other members of the Church, who are called the Sons of God; and that it was the progeny of Cain, and other wicked ones, that are called the daughters of men. Where note that they are not themselves denominated wicked, but the children of men, as being a generation separated from the Church from the birth. And the other are not themselves affirmed to be truly godly ones, but sons of God, as being the seed of the Saints not cast out, but members of the Church, or ⟨p. 119⟩the sons of those who were devoted to God, and so devoted to him themselves: a separated generation belonging to God as his visible Church. Where note, that these that are called the sons of God, even the line of Seth and other godly Parents, were yet so wicked that God repented that he made them, and destroyed them in the flood, sparing only Noah and his family. So that it was not their own godliness, that made them called the sons of God, but their relation, Church state and visible separation from open unchurched Idolaters. Compare this phrase with the like, Deut. 14.1.