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Sarah, in fact, was barren; and, despairing of offspring, and
being resolved that she would have at least through her handmaid that
blessing she saw she could not in her own person procure, she gave her
handmaid to her husband, to whom she herself had been unable to bear
children. From him she required this conjugal duty, exercising her
own right in another's womb. And thus Ishmael was born according to
the common law of human generation, by sexual intercourse. Therefore
it is said that he was born "according to the flesh,", not because
such births are not the gifts of God, nor His handiwork, whose
creative wisdom" reaches," as it is written, "from one end to
another mightily, and sweetly cloth she order all things," but
because, in a case in which the gift of God, which was not due to men
and was the gratuitous largess of grace, was to be conspicuous, it was
requisite that a son be given in a way which no effort of nature could
compass. Nature denies children to persons of the age which Abraham
and Sarah had now reached; besides that, in Sarah's case, she was
barren even in her prime. This nature, so constituted that offspring
could not be looked for, symbolized the nature of the human race
vitiated by sin and by just consequence condemned. which deserves no
future felicity. Fitly, therefore, does Isaac, the child of
promise, typify the children of grace, the citizens of the free city,
who dwell together in everlasting peace, in which self-love and
self-will have no place, but a ministering love that rejoices in the
common joy all, of many hearts makes one, that is to say, secures a
perfect concord.
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