* Chapter ii. 16, 21.

We conceive these to be obvious truths, and wonder that they should be matter of doubt, or dispute, among those who are favored with revelation, and receive it as given of God.  Perfect obedience is evidently the demand of the divine law, and condemnation is denounced against the breakers of it.  “This do, and thou shalt live, but the soul that sinneth, it shall die.” * But none of our race keep the law.  “There is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good and sinneth not.”  The scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise “by faith of Jesus Christ, might be given to them that believe.”  Mankind are “shut up to the faith in Christ..”  This is the way in which God “hath mercy on whom he will have mercy.  He that believeth shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”  Therefore the hope of the apostle, in the way of faith, while discarding hope in any other way.  “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ; even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the Faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law.”

* Lev. xviii. 5.  Ezek. xviii. 4.

From the reasoning of the apostle, the false teachers at Galatia seem not to have urged obedience to the whole law.  Circumcision they taught to be indispensible.  St. Paul allures them, that if they were under obligation to receive circumcision, they were equally obliged to keep the whole law; and that they bound themselves to this by submitting to be circumcised—­that if they reverted to the law, and placed their dependence on their obedience to it, they renounced the grace of Christ, and would not be benefited by it.

“Behold, I Paul, say unto you, that if ye be circumcised.  Christ shall profit you nothing.  For I testify again to every man that it is circumcised, that he is a debtor to keep the whole law.  Christ is become of none effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law, ye are fallen from grace,”

While such was the state of those who followed the judaizing teachers, those who retained the gospel as taught by the apostle, had another hope—­a hope which would not make ashamed—­a hope in divine grace through faith in Christ—­“We through the spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.  For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.”

Such is every Christian’s hope before God.  He “counts all things to be loss and dung that he win Christ; but the righteousness which is of God by faith.”

But while St. Paul was exhibiting and urging these important truths, on the wavering Galatians, he foresaw, that it would be objected, that the scheme which he advanced, tended to licentiousness—­that if men might be saved by faith without the works of the law, they might indulge themselves in sin—­that this would render Christ the minister of sin.  The same objection appears to have been made at Rome, where a faction existed similar to this at Galatia.  This consequence the apostle rejected with abhorrence.  “Do we then make void the law through faith?  God forbid:  Yea we establish the law.”