with faithful Abraham,-and they are so, because they are faithful in spirit, not because they perform the works of the Judaical law.

For whoever rest their plea for acquittal.. from the curse denounced against all sinners in Adam, on their legal performances, are still under the curse: "cursed is every one," it is written, "who remains not in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them," that is, cursed is every one who is not perfect and uniform in his righteousness. The curse being thus unequivocal and without redemption upon every transgressor, who, I say, among the Jews can hope to be saved on the plea of legal righteousness?

It is moreover manifest from the words of.. the prophet Habaccuc, that no one is to claim to be considered as righteous before God on such a plea. For he rests our plea on quite a different footing. "The righteous man," says he, "shall live for his faithfulness." Habaccuc inveighing against the enormous sins of the Jews, does not clothe them in their national distinction of circumcision with immunity from the curse of sin, he does not send them for redemption from that curse to the works of the law, but he directs their attention to the strong rock from whence they were hewn; the rock of faithfulness, the spiritual rock of their great pro

genitor Abraham.

In effect he reminds them

that the just man shall live, or obtain redemption from death, the curse of sin, not by the plea of carnal circumcision or legal works, but by the plea of spiritual faithfulness.

Now the law stands not in spiritual faithful- .. ness; the spirit or principle, the state or disposition of the heart is nothing in the eye of the law; the overt act, the external compliance is every thing: the Judaical principle which it is sought to engraft upon the church of Christ rests the promise of its redemption on a compliance with all its legal requisitions. It says in effect, that he who does all the law commands shall live in it, that is, shall not be cut off from the Jewish community, but that the man who fails, shall be cursed. From this curse, to which all, who seek to be saved by the law, stand liable, for all have failed, Christ has purchased us. He has been made a curse for us, for it is written, cursed are the crucified.

He has submitted to death, the effect of the curse against sin for us; for us, because having never sinned himself, his death could not have any effect on his own account, in saving from sin, or which is the same thing the punishment of sin. But God was pleased thus to set forth his crucified body, or to make him what the law calls a curse, that it might have the effect

of saving us from sin, or the punishment of sin, that we seeing in him as it were in a mirror, the perfect representation of faithfulness perfected by suffering, and being subdued by love and gratitude and admiration, might be spiritually changed and ourselves transformed into his glorious image, into the glorious image of the sons of God, and that we might consequently be accepted by our heavenly father with the same returning favor as if we had ourselves voluntarily suffered the death due to our sins.

For whatever we are sincerely pledged to do, God will in our favor now, as formerly in favor of Abraham, consider as done; in form as respects the law, and in effect as respects the be neficial consequences to the faithful.

Thus has Christ become in effect the not in fact, a curse for us, that all nations find the blessing of Abraham, or reder from the curse of sin, not in circumcisi in that spirit which was exhibited by Jesus on the cross, to which the fai pledged; receiving as true children th of the inheritance given by the spi ham, not through any carnal mar from his body, but through that f which is the sinew of spiritual with Christ his seed.

Brethren, I use an argument from analogy .. (s), drawn from human customs and address. ing itself to human reason. No one puts aside, or makes an additional disposition in a will or testament when it has once been perfected or established. But the words of promise in .. God's will or testament were to Abraham and to his seed, those words are not to his seeds, as referring to more seeds than one, but to thy seed as restricted to me, which seed is Christ. Now the reasoning of the Judaizers, giving permenancy and saving efficacy to the law infers two seeds, in whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed, viz. Moses and Christ. But I say, that the testament which was established by the words of God for Christ or the one seed, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, (to judge by analogy from human testaments) cannot cancel, so as to annul its express words, substituting seeds for seed, I say this in opposition to the Judaical argument which necessarily infers a cancelling.

I say this, and I say it with reason, for if... the law ground the inheritance on the institutions of Moses, thereby making Moses a seed in whom the nations are blessed, that is, in whom the nations are freed from the curse of sin, the law in such case is so completely at variance with the testament, naming two seeds, when

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the testament admits but one, that it must reasoning from analogy, overthrow it all together, and the inheritance of life, or the blessing, no londerives from Abraham, according to the words of the promise, but from Moses according to the law. But it was to Abraham that the testament was granted, and that in favor of his one seed, and the law, I repeat, an instrument of so many years later a date cannot be supposed capable of cancelling the testament originally perfected to Abraham, and secured for his one seed.

What then you ask is the law? Not a.. scheme or a system I answer, which was given on account of righteousness, but of sin, which like Christ should bless, by doing away with sin or bringing in righteousness, but a scheme or system adapted to, or composed with a view to, and on account of the state of, the Jewish nation, rendered necessary by the sinful state of that nation, to remain till the coming of him in whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed by his taking away sin. The law was appointed to precede the coming of Christ, who was restrictively named in God's testament as the one seed in or through whom God's blessing should alight upon the faithful of all

nations.

It was arranged or ordered for the parties affected, not immediately by the parties them