by it, and that, as transgressors, they must look for salvation solely by faith in the promised Messiah. But of these things they had no idea : they could see nothing in the whole dis- pensation but a covenant made with them as God's peculiar people ; by an obedience to which, according to the mere letter of it, they supposed that they should obtain all the blessings both of time and eternity. And this is the notion which has been entertained by them in all successive ages even to the present day. Notwithstanding it is impossible for them now, by reason of their dispersion, to obey their ceremonial law, they still suppose that they are to be saved by their own obedience. They have no idea of the atonement that has been offered for them, or of the righteousness that has been wrought out for them, by Christ's obedience unto death : they cannot raise their minds above a compliance with certain rites (many of them appointed by man only, and substituted in the place of those which were appointed of God), and an external conformity with the mere letter of the moral law : like Paul, in his unconverted state, if they have been kept from any gross violations of their law, they account themselves " blame- less ;" and if they have transgressed their law in ever so great a degree, they have no conception of any thing but their repentance and reformation to re-instate them in the Divine favour. They will indeed speak of their Messiah whom they expect, and in whom they profess a kind of confidence ; but they have no definite idea of what he is to do for them, or in what way he is to recommend them to God. They know nothing of " the law as a ministration of death and of condem- nation" nor do they know any thing of " Christ as the end of the laiv for righteousness to those who believe in him." In a word, they know nothing of their ceremonial law as completed in him nor of their moral law as shutting them up to him : but they stand fully on their own obedience, interpreting the pro- mises, which related only to their continuance in Canaan, as the ground on which they look for eternal life. Thus, though following after righteousness, and in some instances with con- siderable zeal, they neither do, nor can, attain to it, because they cleave to the law as the ground of their hopes, and make a stumbling-block of that stone, which is the only foundation on which a sinner can ever stand before God''.]
2. The true meaning of their prophecies —
[They do not see that chain of prophecy, commencing with the promise of " the Seed of the woman who should bruise the serpent's head," and gradually proceeding through all successive ages, with ever increasing clearness and precision,
c Rom. ix. 31—33. and x. 2, 3.