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written the Epistle from Corinth, during his stay there after he had written the second Epistle to the Corinthians in Macedonia; or perhaps partly in Macedonia on his journey, and partly after his arrival at Corinth. Professor Lightfoot gives several other reasons, grounded on St. Paul's way of speaking of his personal sufferings in the three Epistles, his doctrinal statements, the progress of opposition to him on the part of the Jews, and his mode of treating offenders, why this order of the three, rather than the commonly-supposed one should be adopted. And I own, though this was not always my opinion, that I am now disposed to think with him.

When we come to speak of the character of this Epistle, our task is an easy one. It is indeed marked and unmistakable from the first. The letter sprung out of two circumstances, both belonging to the same growing apostasy on the part of the Galatians. They were falling from the gospel of the grace of Christ, and they were repudiating his apostolic authority. On this their twofold fault the whole Epistle is the comment. First of all, after denouncing in the plainest terms their fickleness, he proceeds to defend the apostolic

character of his ministry, and its independence on human testimony. This he does by giving a history of his intercourse with the other Apostles at and after his own conversion: ending with a remarkable account of an occasion at Antioch when he found himself compelled to withstand and openly rebuke St. Peter. The value to the Church of this narration cannot be over-esteemed. It has set before us, the reality of the conflicts of the apostolic Church, and the fallibility of the great leaders of it, in a way for which we cannot be too thankful. It is hardly strange that, in the midst of the superstition which has ever clung to the estimate of the Apostles' character and work, this very passage itself should have been made a subject of contention. Jerome, with that want of ingenuousness which he so often shows, endeavoured to explain it away, and to make out that there was no difference between the Apostles after all. Whereupon Augustine, the most honest, as he was far the most able, of the Fathers, wrote to him most plainly and seriously, warning him of the consequences to the cause of truth, if such an explanation were allowed to stand. It is much to Jerome's credit, that he openly retracted his dishonest interpretation.

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At chap. iii. the polemical portion at once begins, with that abruptness and fervour which are the characteristics of our Epistle. Who had bewitched and seduced them into such folly as they were now showing? They had seen Christ crucified, in the Apostle's plain setting of Him forth but some one had raised a counter-spell, had obscured and drawn them away from that holy vision. They had begun in a high and glorious spiritual course: they were seeking to be perfected in a low, beggarly, carnal one. Not so Abraham, the father of the faithful, who was justified by faith, and whose children walk by faith and are blessed. The law brings not blessing, but a curse; from which curse Christ hath delivered us. And God's covenant of faith with Abraham, ratified long before the law, could never be set aside nor modified by that subsequent dispensation which was merely interposed for a temporary purpose, and that purpose, fulfilled when Christ came, clothing us with the fulness of our adoption as sons in God's family.

Here (chap. iv. 8) he again turns abruptly to the Galatians, and breaks out into fervid, but at the same time most affectionate pleading with

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them on their strange conduct as regarded the Gospel and himself: recounting the totally different reception given by them to both on his first visit amongst them.

And now follows a remarkable passage, in which St. Paul carries on his argument against the Judaizers by maintaining against them the allegorical sense of that law of which they professed themselves the upholders: by maintaining, that is, that the events, and even the names, which come before us in the Old Testament history, have beneath them spiritual meanings, and are parables of Christian truths. He adopted the same strain in 1 Cor. x., when he spoke of the mystical meaning of the history of the Jews in the wilderness: the same again in 1 Cor. xv., when he insisted on the mutual relations of Adam and of Christ. Mr. Conybeare has well remarked, 'The lesson to be drawn from this whole passage as regards the Christian use of the Old Testament, is of an importance which can scarcely be over-rated.'

The result of the argument from the allegorical interpretation is, that we are not children of a system of bondage, but of liberty wherewith Christ made us free. In this liberty we must stand fast,

and not be entangled again in slavery. Christ has become of no use to us.

If we are, The adoption

of any requirement of the law cuts off from Christ. Who could have perverted the favourable course in which they were once running? Whoever he were, he should bear his punishment. One form of his yearning for the excision of their perverters the Apostle signifies in a wish, which modern language is obliged to veil, but which is all the more characteristic of his burning and irrepressible zeal for the purity of the faith.

And now comes in the third or hortatory portion of the Epistle, by which it appears that, besides fickleness in matter of belief and ceremonial, grave moral faults had broken out among the Galatians bitter mutual dissension, and licentious following of the lusts of the flesh.

After this, he draws to a close.

And that close
Contrary to his

is as remarkable as the opening. usual practice, he had written this whole letter to them with his own hand: and he directs their attention (see chap. vi. 11, in the corrections below) to the great sprawling handwriting, the consequence probably of his weakness of sight, or unsteadiness of hand, testifying to the earnest

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