were partly moral, and partly ceremonial. It may be asked, then ; In publishing this law, did God intend to set aside the promise ? No : he did not ; and he could not: he could not, because the promise made to Abraham was made to him and to his believ- ing seed, whether of Jews or Gentiles, to the end of the world : but the law given to Moses was given only to a small portion of Abraham's seed ; and that only for a time : and, consequently, as no covenant can be annulled but by the consent of both the par- ties interested in it, and only one of those parties was present at the transaction on Mount Sinai, nothing that was done there could supersede what had been done with others four hundred and thirty years before. Then, it would be asked, ' For what end was this law given ?' The Apostle answers, " It was given because of transgressions, till the seed should come, to whom the promise was made ;" that is, it was given to shew to what an extent transgres- sion had abounded ; and how greatly they needed the Promised Seed, to recommend them to God. Instead of setting aside the promises, then, as a person unac- quainted with its uses might be ready to suppose, it was intended rather to be subservient to them ; by shewing to men, that, being condemned by the law, they must seek for life as a free gift of God, through faith in the Promised Seed.
Let it then be observed, that, if we admit the cere- monial law to be in part intended, it is only in part : it is only as shewing that works of every kind, whether ceremonial or moral, are equally excluded from the office of justifying the soul before God. This is the whole scope of the Apostle's argument, whether in the Epistle to the Galatians, or in that to the Romans : and to say, that, though ceremonial works cannot justify us, moral works may, is to oppose the whole line of his argument throughout both the epistles, and to set it aside altogether. The great question in both is, Whether we are to be jus- tified by works or by faith ? And his whole argu- ment, in both, goes to prove this one point, that