50 EPHESIANS,

verse, material and rational, as being placed under Jesus Christ; as they speak especially of all orders of intelligent creatures being subject to him; as they teach the union of the long disjected members of the human family, the Jews and Gentiles, in one body in Christ, of which union this epistle says so much and in such exalted strains; and as finally they speak of the union of the saints of all ages and nations, of those now in heaven and of those now on earth, in one great family above; the words, ALL THINGs, are very various- ly explained. 1. Some understand them to include the whole creation, material and spiritual, and apply the passage to the final restoration of all things; or to that redemption of the creature from the bondage of corrup-., tion of which the apostle speaks in Rom. 8, 19-22. 2. Others restrict the “all things” to all intelligent creatures—good and bad, angels and men—fallen spirits and the finally impenitent. In this view the reduction to unity, here spoken of, is understood by the advocates of the restoration of all things to the favour of God, to refer to the destruction of all sin and the banishment of all misery from the universe. But those who believe that the Scriptures teach that the fallen angels and the finally impenitent among men, are not to be restored to holiness and happiness, and who give the phrase “ all things” the wide sense just mentioned, understand the apostle to refer to the final triumph of Christ over all his enemies, of which he speaks in 1 Cor. 15, 23-28. All things in heaven above, in the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth, are to be made subject