1 Corinthians 7:14

is sanctified In both members of the sentence the original has hath been sanctified, i.e. by the conversion of the believer to Christianity. The sacred character imparted by Christianity has, since it imparts union with Christ the Lord of all, a power to overbear the impurity of the non-Christian partner in wedlock. Meyer's note is very striking here. He says that "the Christian sanctity affects even the non-believing partner in a marriage and so passes over to him that he does not remain a profane person, but through the intimate union of wedded life becomes partaker (as if by a sacred contagion) of the higher divinely consecrated character of his consort." And this is because matrimony is "a holy estate instituted of God." For the much stricter view under the Law, Dean Stanley refers to Ezra, ch. 9, and Nehemiah 9:2; Nehemiah 13:23-28. But these marriages were contracted in defiance of the prohibition in Exodus 34:16; Deuteronomy 7:3-4, a prohibition rendered necessary by the surrounding idolatry and its attendant licentiousness. They stand upon a different footing to marriages contracted beforeadmission into covenant with God.

else were your children unclean, but now are they holy This principle applies also to the children of such a marriage. The sanctity, i.e. the consecration, of the parent possessing the life of Christ, and living in holy wedlock with an unbelieving husband or wife, descends to the child, which from its birth may be regarded as -holy to the Lord." "Which we may not so understand as if the children of baptized 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 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." Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, Book v. lx. 6. This holds good, however, only of such marriages as were contracted before conversion. Christians were forbidden in 1 Corinthians 7:39 and in 2 Corinthians 6:14, to contract such marriages.