Therefore the explanation of the authorized Dutch annotations summarizes this holiness of the children of believers as being included in the outward covenant of God and having access to the signs and seals of God’s grace. This is how the text has been understood by Calvin and by most Reformed theologians. The children of believers are called holy, even as the children of the Jews were, because they are heirs of the covenant and are set apart from the impure seed of idolaters,1 or as Petrus van Mastricht formulated it: they are holy through a covenant holiness whereby in former times the entire
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