and sustained effort. But the apostle shows that justification, or judicial pardon, is accorded, not to him who worketh, but to him who believeth, whether he be Jew or Gentile; a truth which he illustrates, not only from the inspired lines of David, but from the experience of Abraham, who, while as yet in Gentilism, believed, and was justified.

8. The history of Abraham's justification further amplified. The grace manifested in him is infinitely free for us, and was exemplified indeed in his case on our account, as a signal light, to show us in what direction to look for mercy.

9. Results of justification: peace; access (to the favour and presence of the Deity); hope of glory, warranted by the gift of the Holy Ghost, imparting the love of God; joy, even in affliction, sanctified to our improvement; a looking for complete salvation, to be conferred by the glorified Redeemer who had first procured it by his death; meantime, a joyful sense of reconciliation with God.

10. Extent of the provision for man's justification. (1.) The consequences of the sin of the first Adam extended to the whole race. This manifest in the universal reign of death. (2.) Yet in this relation of headship to the entire race, Adam was the type of the Messiah, the benefit of whose mediation is as extensive potentially, as the disastrous consequences of the first transgression. Thus the demerit of the first Adam brought death; the merit of the Second wins life. The sentence of condemnation was caused by a single offence, which nevertheless binds on all the penalty of death; but the grace shown us in Christ extends to the remission of innumerable offences, and consummates its designs in Life. Through the fall of Adam was established the tyranny of death; but through redeeming grace, they who become its subjects already triumph over death, and are destined to

reign in a glorious immortality. Not only are the benefits of the atonement virtually co-extensive with the ravages of natural evil upon earth, but they are in themselves infinitely superior to the loss we suffered through the primitive transgression.

11. The gospel directly opposed to Antinomianism. We have died by sin; how, then, can we expect life by continuing in it? Our very baptism, symbolizing as it does our interest and participation in the death of Christ, that death which had been rendered necessary through sin, admonishes us to regard the latter with instinctive and immutable abhorrence; while, in another aspect, it reminds us that, risen with Christ, our congenial element is no longer sin, from which death is inseparable, but holiness and life in the kingdom of grace and of glory.

For if as believers we have a oneness with Jesus in his death, we have a oneness also with him in his resurrection.

Besides, the Redeemer's death, in which we whom he then represented also died, has not only thus atoned for sin by realizing the penalty thereof, but, in its moral effects, works in us a death to it. Thus, as the servant when dead is no longer under the authority of his master, so we, having died to sin, can no longer be enslaved by it. These principles are followed, after the manner of the apostle, by a powerful series of exhortations and appeals.

12. Man considered out of Christ is hopelessly depraved, and irretrievably condemned; the moral law, notwithstanding his sinful inability to keep it, having a full claim on his obedience, and being sanctioned with penalties to which the sins of every hour render him the more heavily liable. But, united to Christ by faith, he is here said to have died to the law; that is, he has been set free from its penalty or curse, and is now no longer in

servitude to it, as an institution which prescribes the terms of his justification.

Thus personal faith in the Redeemer changes our status in relation to the divine government; but besides this, it is accompanied by an internal renovation, the newness of a life consecrated to the service of a reconciled God.

But this emancipation from the law extends only to its penalty and to its obligations as a means of justification. It is still recognised as a rule of conduct of intrinsic and immutable sanctity and goodness. Applied in its spiritual perfection to the conscience, as the apostle shows by a vivid personification of an awakened, but as yet Christless, penitent, it renders us painfully sensible of the obliquities of the mind as well as of the outward conduct, and convinces us of sin within and without, but does not, and cannot, reveal the way of salvation. This is the prerogative of the gospel.

13. [If we may take the term "mind' as synonymous with "spirit;" (compare the Syriac, 1 Thess. v. 23; Gal. vi. 18;) "the mind" and "the flesh " may be considered here as distinguishing the regenerate from the unregenerate state. (John iii. 6, 7; Gal. v. 16-25.)] The apostle now describes the blessedness of the man who, in the reception of the gospel, finds the liberty of the children of God; that liberty procured by the mission and work of the incarnate Son, and an introduction into which is attended by peace of conscience, spiritual life, the fruit of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, whose presence is the pledge of a perfect consummation and bliss for the faithful, both in body and soul for ever.

14. The regenerate, as being trained for the fruition of this glorified immortality, are now in a condition of spiritual discipline. They are the pupils of a divine Teacher, even the Spirit of truth, who has created, and is maturing within them, the dispositions that belong

to the filial relation to the Deity into which they have been admitted by adopting grace. Of this relation they have an internal consciousness; the Spirit bearing witness with their spirits that they are the children of God, and heirs because sons. In the prospect of their great inheritance, the afflictions of time become inconsiderable, while the Spirit of faith enables the believer not only to anticipate his own deliverance from sorrow, but to enter into the import of the prophetic intimations of a coming era, when the universe at large shall be one scene of repose and felicity.

The gracious work of the Holy Ghost in our sanctification is further unfolded in the assistance he gives us in prayer.

15. Characteristics and privileges of the saved. They love God; they are conformed to Christ; they realize the saving purposes of the unchangeable Jehovah; they are such as he designed to glorify, they having obeyed his call and received justification. In this blessed state (their fidelity being always implied) they may, with the utmost confidence, expect the endless joys which have been obtained by the mediatorial death of the unspared Son. What adverse power shall triumph against the omnipotence which is at work to save them? Who shall separate them from the love of a covenant God?

But in proportion to the excellency of the privileges of believers, was the distress felt by the apostle on behalf of his Hebrew kindred, who, through unbelief, are accursed from Christ, and for whose salvation he could himself become a sacrifice.

16. For while the Gentiles, for the possibility of whose salvation he had at first to argue, had, by their obedience to the call of the gospel, become an elect people of the Lord; the Jews, notwithstanding their ancient preroga

tives, by being disobedient to the heavenly calling, had been rejected and made reprobate.

Meantime, the purpose of the divine favour to ISRAEL, as such, had not become null; for the unbelieving Jews are Israel only in name; mere carnal descent from Abraham not being saving in itself. Of the literal progeny of

Abraham, and after him of Isaac, One only became the father of a consecrated people. Nor in the choice or rejection of peoples, in the carrying out of his great designs, can the Almighty be thought to entertain an inequitable partiality, since he has the inalienable right to dispense his bounty (which he is under no obligation to give to any) according to the dictate of his own unerring wisdom.

17, 18. But in the contemplation of this display of mercy and of justice, we learn the necessity of simple and grateful submission to the terms of salvation enunciated in the gospel. We behold the Gentiles, at the voice of the Son of God, throwing off the blinding bandages and enslaving fetters of Heathenism, and made partakers of the privileges of the dispensation of grace: while Israel after the flesh, practically unmindful of the true nature and conditions of the Abrahamic covenant, and in earnest after the establishment of a self-imaged righteousness, to be won by obedience to the institutes of Mosaism, have fallen short of the inestimable prize.

19. Contrast of the legal and evangelical righteousness. The one could only be achieved by a meritorious obedience to the primeval law; the other is inseparable from salvation by faith. This the privilege of every man, without distinction, as was proclaimed by the Old-Testament prophets themselves. Faith, which has a natural developement in confession of Christ, is preceded by, and dependent on, the manifestation of divine truth to the mind through the gospel; which, in the purpose of God,

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