power of his own body, but the wife.”1779 Moses too, who was born of a Hebrew mother
and was exposed, was adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter.1780 There were not then indeed the
same forms of law as now, but the choice of the will was taken for the rule of law, as the
Apostle saith also in another place, “The Gentiles which have not the law, do by nature the
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things contained in the law.”1781 But if it is permitted to women to make those their children
to whom they have not given birth, why should it not be allowed men to do so too with
those whom they have not begotten of their body, but of the love of adoption. For we read
that the patriarch Jacob even, the father of so many children, made his grandchildren, the
sons of Joseph, his own children, in these words: “These too shall be mine, and they shall
receive the land with their brethren, and those which thou begettest after them shall be
thine.”1782 But it will be said, perhaps, that this word “adoption” is not found in the Holy
Scriptures. As though it were of any importance by what name it is called, when the thing
itself is there—for a woman to have a child to whom she has not given birth, or a man a
child whom he has not begotten. And he may, without any opposition from me, refuse to
call Joseph adopted, provided he grant that he may have been the son of a man of whose
body he was not born. Yet the Apostle Paul does continually use this very word “adoption,”
and1783 that to express a great mystery. For though Scripture testifies that our Lord Jesus
Christ is the only Son of God, it says, that the brethren and coheirs whom He hath vouchsafed
to have, are made so by a kind of adoption through Divine grace. “When,” saith he, “the
fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law,
to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”1784
And in another place: “We groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the re-
demption of our body.”1785 And again, when he was speaking of the Jews, “I could wish
that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh;
who are Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the testaments, and
the giving of the law; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ
came, Who is over all, God blessed for ever.”1786 Where he shows, that the word “adoption,”
or at least the thing which it signifies, was of ancient use among the Jews, just as was the
Testament and the giving of the Law, which he mentions together with it.
1779 1 Cor. vii. 4.
1780 Exod. ii. 10.
1781 Rom. ii. 14.
1782 Gen. xlviii. 5, 6.
1783 In magno sacramento.
1784 Gal. iv. 4, 5.
1785 Rom. viii. 23.
1786 Rom. ix. 3, etc.
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Of the agreement of the evangelists Matthew and Luke in the generations…