mother was a Jewess, because he knew that his countrymen regarded circumcision in such cases as obligatory, Acts 16, 1-3. The apostle constantly assumes that his readers were famihar with the principles and facts of the Old Testament economy. Comp. 10, 1-13.
^ The other view of the argument is this : ' If, as you ad- mit, the children of believers be holy, why should not the husband or the wife of a believer be holy. The conjugal re- lation IS as intimate as the parental. If the one relation se- cures this sacredness, so must the other. If the husband be not sanctified by his believing wife, children are not sanctified by behevmg parents.' This, however, supposes a change in the persons addressed. Paul is speaking to persons involved in these mixed marriages. Your children naturally means the children of you who have unbelieving husbands or wives. . Whereas this explanation supposes your to refer to Christians generally. In either way, however, this passage recognises as umversaUy conceded the great scriptural principle, that the children of believers are holy. They are holy in the same sense m which the Jews were holy. They are included in the church, and have a right to be so regarded. The child of a Jewish parent had a right to circumcision, and to all the priv- ileges of the theocracy. So the child of a Christian parent has a right to baptism and to all the privileges of the church so long as he is represented by his parent ; that is, until he arrives at the period of life when he is entitled and bound to act for himself. Then his relation to the church depends upon his own act. The church is the same in all ages. And it IS most instructive to observe how the writers of the New Testament quietly take for granted that the great principles which underhe the old dispensation, are still in force under the new. The children of Jews were treated as Jews ; and the children of Christians, Paul assumes as a thing no one would dispute,^ are to be treated as Christians. Some modern Ger- man writers find in this passage a proof that infant baptism was unknown m the apostohc church. They say that Paul could not attribute the hohness of children to their parentage, if they were baptized— because their consecration would then be due to that rite, and not to their descent. This is strange reasoning. The truth is, that they were baptized not to make them holy, but because they were holy. The Jewish child was circumcised because he was a Jew, and not to make him one. The Rabbins say : Peregrina si proselyta fuerit et cum