1 Corinthians 7:14

14. Sanctified A Jew marrying a pagan is desecrated, and his marriage a sin, and so void; but, reversely, if a Christian marry an antichristian his sacredness is conceived as extending to and covering the unbeliever, so far, at any rate, that the marriage is still “holy matrimony,” and the tie must not be broken.

Unbelieving If under Christianity, as under Judaism, the infidel desecrated the believer by marriage and the marriage was void, then, by parity, the children would be illegitimate, and by inheritance, infidel.

Now Under the Christian law.

Holy Undesecrated and legitimate.

During the old dispensation the pagan child had, under the common atonement of Christ, the same right to circumcision that the Jewish child had; but his misfortune was, that not being born within the chosen seed, where the institution was imperative, he failed to inherit it as a performed rite, with the accompanying nurture that followed. He was, therefore, ritually not holy. Under the new dispensation, similarly, all children being under the common atonement have an equal right to baptism. They stand in a common justification and salvability, which baptism now, as circumcision of old, does not create, but recognises; holding the infant as a virtual believer. The child of Christian parents inherits, as did the child of the Jewish, not a special right to baptism, but a special inherited probability of receiving the rite, with its consequent recognition by the Church as being her nursling, to be embodied into her full membership when, at responsible age, the responsibilities of such a membership are properly accepted.

Hence, by parity, the child of Christian parents, like the child of Jewish parents, may be called holy. Yet the child under the new dispensation has this advantage over the child of the old, that under the latter the infidelity of either parent disfranchised him.

It will be seen that the words sanctified, holy, and unholy, are here used, not in reference to inward holiness of heart, but in the sense that Jerusalem is called the holy city, that the temple, and even its consecrated vessels, were called holy, and even the Jewish race was holy; namely, in the sense of sacred, chosen, consecrated to a special divine purpose. So St. Paul says, “If the root be holy, so are the branches,” (Romans 11:16;) a holiness which, in view of ultimate restoration, he considers as still inherited by the Jewish race. The child of Christian parents is here called holy in the same sense that the child of the Jew was holy, namely, as providential heir, and probably recipient, of the consecrating ordinances of the Church.