What shall we say then? Is the law sin? By no means. On the contrary I knew not sin except through the law; for I had not known inordinate desire, unless the law had said, You shall not desire inordinately.

And not only this, but Rebecca also being with child by one, by our father Isaac??11 for the children not yet being born, nor having done any thing good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might continue, not of works but of him that calls,??12 it was said to her that the older shall serve the younger;

and in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, there they shall be called children of the living God.

As also Isaiah said before, Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a posterity, we should have been like Sodom, and should have resembled Gomorrah.