highest degree useful when viewed in their proper light, become ruinous when perverted into grounds of confidence. What answers well as a sign is a miserable substitute for the thing signified. Circumcision will not serve for righteousness, nor baptism for regeneration, v. 10.
7. As Abraham is the father of all believers, all believers are brethren. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, bond nor free among them as Chris- tians, vs. 11, 12.
8. The seed of Abraham, or true believers, with Jesus Christ their head, are the heirs of the world. To them it will ultimately belong; even the uttermost parts of the earth shall be their possession, v. 13.
9. To speak of justification by obedience to a law which we have broken is a solecism. That which condemns cannot justify, v. 15.
10. No blessing is sure for sinners that is not gratuitous. A promise suspended on obedience they could never render sure. One entirely gratuitous needs only to be accepted to become ours, v. 16.
11. It is the entire freeness of the gospel, and its requiring faith as the condition of acceptance, which renders it suited to all ages and nations, V. 16.
12. The proper object of faith is the divine promise ; or God considered as able and determined to accomplish his word, v. 17.
1. The renunciation of a legal self-righteous spirit is the first requisi- tion of the gospel. This must be done, or the gospel cannot be accepted. ' He who works,' i. e. who trusts in his works, refuses to be saved by grace, vs. 1 — 5.
2. The more intimately we are acquainted with our own hearts and with the character of God, the more ready shall we be to renounce our own righteousness and to trust in his mercy, vs. 2, 3.-
3. Those only are truly happy and secure who, under a sense of ill- desert and helplessness, cast themselves upon the grace and promise of God, vs. 7, 8.
4. Nothing is more natural, and nothing has occurred more extensively in the Christian church, than the perversion of the means of grace into grounds of dependence. Thus it was with circumcision, and thus it is with baptism, "the Lord's supper ; thus too with prayer, fasting, &c. &c. This is the rock on which millions have been shipwrecked, vs. 9—12.
5. There is no hope for those, who, forsaking the grace of God, take refuge in a law which worketh wrath, v. 15.
6. All things are ours if we are Christ's. Heirs of the life that now is, and of that which is to come, v. 13.
7. As the God in whom believers trust, is he to whom all things are known, and all things are subject, they should be strong in faith, giving glory to God, v. 17.