238 AN EXPOSITION OF THE [CHAP. IV.
This, then, having been given out and established dw) xaraCorgs xéowov, “from the very beginning of the world,” this was the rise of the gospel, which ever since hath been the ground, rule, and mea~ sure of all God’s transactions with the children of men. Whatever new declarations have been made of it, whatever means have been used to instruct men in it, yet the gospel was still the same through- out all times and ages. The Gentiles, therefore, had no true ground to object against the doctrine of it that it was new: for though, by the sin and unbelief of themselves and their forefathers, who had lost, despised, and totally rejected, the first revelation of it, it was new to them; yea, and God, in his just and righteous judgments, had hid it from them, and rendered it at length wvoripioy xpovorg ceiwvions ceorynuévov, Rom. xvi. 25,—“a mystery,” the declaration whereof was “silenced from the past ages of the world,” or all the secula that had passed from the eredinlp ; yet in itself it was not new, but the same that was revealed froin the foundation of the world by God himself. And this is for the honour of the gospel; for it is a certain rule, “Quod antiquissimum, id verissimum,”—‘That which is most ancient is most true.” Falsehood endeavours by all means to countenance itself from antiquity, and thereby gives testimony to this rule, that truth is most ancient. And this discovers the lewdness of that imagination, that there have been several ways, in several seasons, whereby men came to the knowledge and enjoyment of God. * Some, they say, did so by the law, some by the light of nature, or the light within them, or by philosophy, which is the improvement of it. For God having from the “beginning,” from the “ foundation of the world,” declared the gospel in the manner before proved, as the means whereby sinners might know him, live unto him, and be made partakers of him, shall we think that when this way of his was despised and rejected by men, he himself would do so also, and follow them in their ways, indeed their delusions, which they had chosen, in opposition to his truth and holiness? It is fond and blasphemous once so to imagine.
The Jews, with whom our apostle had to do peculiarly, derived their privileges from the giving of the law, and concluded that because the law was given unto them of God, according to the law they were to worship him, and by the Jaw they were to be saved. How doth he convince them of their error and mistake in this matter? He doth it by letting them know that the covenant, or the promise of the gospel, was given unto them long before the law, so that whatever the end and use of the law were (which what they were he here declares), it did not, nor could disannul the promise; that is, take its work away, or erect a new way of justifica- tion and salvation. Gal. iii. 17, “ And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ” (that is, the promise
VER. 1, 2.] EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 239
given unto Abraham, verse 16), ‘the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the pro- mise of none effect.” As if he had said, ‘God made a promise to Abraham, or made a covenant with him, whereby he was evangelized, and the way of life and salvation by Christ made known unto him. Now, if the end of the law was to justify sinners, to give them life and salvation, then the way of the promise and covenant instituted by God four hundred and thirty years before must be disannulled. But this the faithfulness and unchangeableness of God will not admit.’ And the apostle insists only on the precedency mentioned, and not that priority which it had of the law of Moses, in that it was preached from the foundation of the world; because dealing with the Jews, it was sufficient for him to evince that even in their relation unto God, and God’s especial dealings with them, the gospel shad the pre- eedency of the law. What, then, John the Baptist said of the Lord Christ and himself, “ He that cometh after me is preferred before me, for he was before me,” John i, 15,—though he came after him in his ministry, yet he was above him in dignity, because he had a pre-existence in his divine nature unto him,—the like in another sense may be said of the law and gospel as preached by Christ and his apostles. Though it came after the law, yet it was preferred above it or before it, because it was before it. It was, in the substance and efficacy of it, revealed and declared long before the giving of the law, and therefore in all things was to be preferred before it.
It appears, then, that from first to last the gospel is, and ever was, the only way of coming wnto God; and to think of any other way or means for that end, is both highly vain and exceedingly deroga- tory to the glory of God’s wisdom, faithfulness, and holiness.