13. Some commentators have found great difficulty in this verse, because they supposed that those who in the preceding verse are said to have got the power to become children of God are here said to have been already born of God. But the difficulty vanishes, it seems to us, if verse 13 be taken as explaining not what those who believed were before they became sons of God, but the _nature of the filiation_, to which those who believed got power to raise themselves. It is not faith that makes them sons of God, but through faith (not as a meritorious cause, but as a condition) they attained to charity, which made them children of God. This too is all that is meant in 1 Jn. v. 1. It is not meant that by believing they are _eo ipso_, through faith alone, sons of God. Faith, as the Council of Trent lays down, is the root of justification, but it is not the formal nor even the meritorious cause of justification; it is a condition “sine qua non.” And just as St. Paul attributes justification to faith without meaning that it is of itself sufficient, so St. John (1 John v. 1) attributes to faith Divine sonship without meaning that it comes from faith alone. See Decrees of the Council of Trent, Sess. vi. Chap. vi. and viii. The meaning of the two verses, according to this view, is, that as many as received Christ by believing in Him, got power to become children of God, children who _were_ born (ἐγεννήθησαν) not of _bloods_,(25) nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Thus verse 13 explains that these sons of God were born not in a carnal but in a spiritual manner. “Tria hic de generatione humana sic exponit St. Thomas: _ex sanguinibus_, ut ex causa materiali; _ex voluntate carnis_,(26) ut ex causa efficiente quantum ad concupiscentiam (in qua est voluntas sensitiva); _ex voluntate viri_, ut ex causa efficiente intellectuali (libere actum conjugalem perficiente).” Corl. To be born of God, implies that we are transferred into a new life wherein we become in some sense partakers of the Divine nature (2 Pet. i. 4). Through the seed of Divine grace we are begotten anew and raised to this higher life. 14. Et Verbum caro factum est, 14. And the Word was made et habitavit in nobis: et flesh, and dwelt among us (and vidimus gloriam eius, gloriam we saw his glory, the glory as quasi Unigeniti a Patre, it were of the only‐begotten plenum gratiae et veritatis. of the Father) full of grace and truth.