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for I am as ye 13. Te know how

8. Howbeit, then when ye knew not God, ye did fervice unto them which by nature are no gods. 9. But now after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye defire again to be in bondage? 10. Te obferve days, and months, and times, and years. 11. I am afraid of you, left I have beftowed upon you labour in vain. 12. Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am; are: ye have not injured me at all. through infirmity of the flesh, I preached the gospel unto you at the firft. 14. And my temptation which was in my flefb ye defpifed not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Chrift Fefus. 15. Where is then the blessedness you spake of? for I bear you record, that if it had been poffible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to 16. Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth? 17. They zealously affect you, but not well; yea, they would exclude you, that you might affect them. 18. But it is good to be zealously good thing, and not only when I

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am prefent with you.

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HE Apostle having faid what he thought proper for convincing the Galatians of the absurdity of the new doctrine which they were in fuch danger of being feduced by, and plainly demonstrated that the gofpel of Chrift had done what

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was abfolutely impoffible for the law to do, and indeed done all, by bringing them to Christ, and by him as near to God as any creature could be, proceeds now to apply the principles he had laid down to their particular cafe. But being aware, that the Gentiles who feem to have been the

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great majority of these churches, might say, they never were in bondage to the law of Mofes, and that however the Jews might find themselves obliged to Christ for their deliverance from the bondage and curse of it, they could owe him nothing on that score, he tells them, that they were under a greatly worfe bondage than they. The bondage of the Jews was but like that of a schoolmaster or governor; and all for their good, to lead them to that only way by which they could come to the poffeffion of the inheritance. Whereas they did not so much as know God; and were held in bondage or did fervice to those who by nature were no gods, but had the name given them; and were put in the place of the only true God, by ignorant and mistaken men. They were without Chrift, ftrangers to the promife, and therefore without hope, and without God in the world; and, to fay all in

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one word, dead in trefpaffes and fins: For thus he defcribes the Ephefian Gentiles, Eph.ii.; and though he is not so particular with regard to the Galatians, yet the general charge comprehends the whole.

They served those which were no gods. The word the Apostle ufes here is never applied to a hired fervant, or any person but such as are bond-flaves, and absolutely their master's property. He does not fay, they were formally flaves to those things which they ferved as gods; because many of them had no existence, but were the mere creatures of fancy; and fuch as had a real being, the fun, moon, and the fabric of the heavens, were incapable of claiming any fervice of them; and as little were they capable of doing them any good. But by the accounts we have of their fervices in the Old-Teftament history, and other good authors, the bondage must have been terrible, that could drive them into fuch acts of barbarity, as we find were practifed in what they called their religious worship. And fo numberlefs were their washings, purifications as they called them, facrifices, and other rites and ceremonies, in their wor

fhip of their different imaginary gods, that their service was rather more burdenfome under their fuperftition, than that of the Jews to the true God.

It cannot escape any one's obfervation, who has at all reflected on it, that there is a very remarkable fimilarity in the fundamentals of the Jewish, and Heathen worship, though the last was miferably corrupted by the superstitious additions made by men who had a turn to serve by them, as the Christian religion itself has been, in spite of the glaring light which fhines forth in the record we have in our hands. Reafon could never fuggeft, that their facrifices and purifications were proper, much lefs neceffary means for putting away fin. Their philofophers and wife men condemned them as much as they durft. But they kept their ground in spite of all that reason had to say against them; an argument the strongest that can be in fuch a cafe, that they must have been originally established by a very high, and even a divine authority. And fuch authority they were believed to have had, when men had loft the knowledge of their true author.

Thence

Thence we may be in cafe to make a good account of what might feem strange in the charge the Apostle brings against the Gentiles, that they defired again to be in bondage to what he calls weak and beggarly elements or rudiments. It was the rites of the law of Mofes they were tempted to fubmit to: these they had never been subject to; and therefore could not, in propriety of language it might be thought, be faid to return to them again: But they had been long accustomed to a fet of rites of the fame kind, and held as much in bondage under them as the Jews were. So long as they knew no betand were ignorant of the true God, and what they had either to hope or fear from him, fomething may be said for them: God winked at those times of ignorance: but now that they knew the truth, better things might be very justly expected of them. They knew God, or rather were known of him.

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There is a great buftle made among fome modern commentators about thing they call a Paronomafea, where the fame word, by the change of a letter or fyllable, is repeated in different fenses; a

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