How then can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean [that is] born of a woman?
Ver. 4. How then can man be justified with God?] Homo frivolus, so the Tygurines translate. How can frivolous man, sorry man, morbis mortique obnoxius, man subject to diseases and death; how can such a man, so mortal and miserable, a mass of mortalities, a map of miseries, a very mixture and compound of dirt and sin, be justified with God? How can he be perfect within himself without the gift of grace, without an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Just One, who alone is the propitiation for our sins, 1Jn 2:2 Romans 3:25, who is made unto us of God, wisdom, righteousness, &c.? 1 Corinthians 1:30 .
Or how can he be clean that is born of a woman?] And therefore born in sin and under a curse, the sign whereof appears in the woman's bearing and bringing forth, Genesis 3:6. Our whole nativity is impure. Hence in the law it is commanded, that the woman should be unclean seven days, that the child should be circumcised on the eighth day; and that the mother should remain three and thirty days in the blood of her purification, Leviticus 12:4. For by nature we are all children of wrath; and that which is born of the flesh is flesh. Neither can any one bring a clean thing out of an unclean, Job 14:4. See Trapp on " Job 14:4 " Surely as a slave begetteth a slave, so doth a sinner beget a sinner. Hence we are loathsome to God, as a toad is to us, because poison is in the nature of it. Infantes ergo non sunt insontes, Infants are not innocents, though we commonly call them so, because free from actual sin, they having not yet "sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression," as the apostle expresseth it, Romans 5:14. But. the first sheet or blanket wherein they are covered is woven of sin, shame, blood, and filth, as may be seen Ezekiel 16:4; Ezekiel 16:6. This should teach us modesty and lowly mindedness.
Unde superbit homo cuius conceptio turpis?
Whence with the man overcome whose conception is shameful.