The grounds and ends of the baptism of the children of the faithful. Opened…The grounds and ends of the baptisme of the children of the faithfull. Opened…

The Apostle (say you) answereth from a double ground.

1. In that all things are sanctified to such as believe Tit. 1.15. therefore believers may have a lawful use of their unbelieving yoke-fellows. This conclusion is true and intended by the Apostle: but this ground of it the Apostle doth not here give, but you fetch it from another Epistle. It is true, the marriage of the Corinthians with their unbelieving yoke-fellows, when they were both infidels, being lawful by Gods institution before, now when one of them came to be converted to the faith, the faith of the believer did not make his former marriage which was lawful before, now unlawful, but rather gave him a pure and sanctified ⟨p. 118⟩use, both of his marriage, and of his yoke-fellow. But the Apostle doth not here give for a ground thereof, the purity of all things to a believer, though he might have given it for a just ground thereof:) but the only ground which in this Text he giveth of it, is taken from the holiness of their children. Else (saith he) were your children unclean: but now they are holy, which argueth, that there is now in the days of the New Testament, such an holiness acknowledged by God to belong to the children from either parent believing, as is sufficient alone, (though there were no other ground of it) to ratify to the believing parent a sanctified use of his unbelieving yoke-fellow) which holiness can be no other, but the holiness which springeth from the Covenant of grace, wherein God promiseth to be a God to the believer and his seed. Whereas on the contrary if this holiness of the children, did only arise from the lawfulness of the marriage of their Parents, by the same ground upon which the Corinthians scrupled the lawfulness of their marriage with their unbelieving yoke-fellows, by the same they might justly scruple the lawfulness of their children, which they had by them, for in that place of Ezra (whence you conceive their scruple, either sprung or grew) as the marriage of the Jews with strangers was unclean; and therefore strange wives to be put away: so their children also were unclean, and to be put away also according to the counsel of God and the example of the people in that place. Let us then proceed to examine your second ground, which you say, the Apostle giveth to satisfy the scruple of the Corinthians, about the retaining of their unbelieving yoke-fellows.