A treatise of original sin ... proving that it is

Quest. How they who believe in Christ can be said to have this privilege given them of Sonship, seeing that they could not believe, unless they were first born of God, and so the sons of God?

Quest. How they who believe in Christ can be said to have this priviledge given them of Sonship, seeing that they could not believe, unlesse they were first born of God, and so the sons of God?

Answ. Some therefore do understand this Sonship in respect of that future glory, which in Scripture is sometimes called Adoption, and 1 John 3. 1. Then it will properly appear that we are sons of God; But we may well enough understand it of our Adoption and Sonship even in this life, and this is said to be obtained by faith, because in our sense and feeling there must be believing, before we come to know this privilege doth belong to us; or else though faith and Sonship be together in time, yet in order of nature one precedeth the other.

Answ. Some therefore do understand this Sonship in respect of that future glory, which in Scripture is sometimes called Adoption, and 1 John 3. 1. Then it will properly appear that we are sonnes of God; But we may well enough understand it of our Adoption and Sonship even in this life, and this is said to be obtained by faith, because in our sense and feeling there must be believing, before we come to know this priviledge doth belong to us; or else though faith and Sonship be together in time, yet in order of nature one precedeth the other.

Thus we have the Subject and the Privilege; But in the next place, we have the Description of the efficient cause, for it was not their own power and freewill that made them believe; Therefore the efficient cause is set down, first, Negatively, and then Positively; Negatively, by removing those false causes that men might imagine; and we have a three-fold enumeration of them, Not of blood, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man. Divers Interpreters go divers ways, though much to the same sense: Some think the Evangelist by blood doth not in the general mean natural generation, and then afterwards distribute it into two particulars, not of the will of the flesh, that is of the woman; Nor of the will of man, that is not of the man. Others (supposing the general) interpret the distribution thus; Not of the will of the flesh, that is not naturally; Nor by the will of man, that is, not by humane adoption, for so some are made legal sons amongst man. Others, they think all these enumerations are but to signify one thing, and therefore the opposition to all is God; But we may not think the holy Ghost doth so industriously reckon up these several ways, but that some special thing is intended by every one; Although, as Erasmus observeth, the emphatical Article is not in the original. By blood therefore we understand any dignity or excellency of birth, it's bloods in the plural number, either by an Enallage, and so an Hebraism, as Maldenate; Or else because of the long succession