1 Corinthians 7:14 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Is sanctified— The words sanctified, holy, and unclean, are used here by the Apostle in the Jewish sense. The Jews called all that were Jews holy, and all others unclean. Thus proles genita extra sanctitatem, was, "a child begotten by parents, while they were yet heathens." Genita intra sanctitatem, was, "a child begotten by parents after they were proselytes." The meaning of this verse is as follows: "For, in such a case as this, the unbelieving husband is so sanctified to the wife, and the unbelieving wife is so sanctified to the husband, that their matrimonial converse is as lawful, as if they were both of the same faith, otherwise your children, in these mixed cases, were unclean, and must be looked upon as unfit to be admitted to those peculiar ordinances, by which the seed of God's people are distinguished: But now they are confessedly holy, and are readily admitted to baptism in all our churches, as if both the parents were Christians; so that the case, you see, is in effect decided by this prevailing practice." This one passage is of great force to establish the use of infant baptism, and prove it even an apostolical practice; and this is the sense in which the ancient Christians understood and explained the text. Should those who are against infant baptism think this explication to be a modern invention, merely to support a system, the commentaries of St. Augustin, and others who lived long before the rise of the people called Baptists, will be a sufficient refutation of such a suspicion. Should it be supposed that holy signifies legitimate, and that unclean denotes illegitimate or bastards;—not to urge that this sense of the phrase is not warranted by Scripture,—the argument will not bear it: for it would be reasoning in a circle, and proving a thing by itself, to say that the marriage of the parents was lawful or not dissolved, because the children were not bastards; whereas all who thought the marriage of the parents to be unlawful or dissolved, must of course esteem the children to be bastards. See Locke, Hammond, Bingham's Antiq. Wall on Infant Baptism, part 1 Chronicles 19 and Elsner, vol. 2: p. 94.