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"of God, we neither have nor can have life in us." And if our faith be not thus employed, and doth not answer this purpose, it is dead, and leaves the poor deluded man as dead as ever.

Such and fo good was the Apostle's zeal for thefe Galatians. But they were behaving in fuch a manner as made him very doubtful about them; and occafioned all the pain he had endured when he was labouring for their conversion: for which cause, as we read, verf. 20. he was very defirous to be present with them; and very likely would have been with them had it been in his power. What hindered him he does not fay; and if they knew, as probably they did, it was needless to mention it. But if he had come, he tells them he would have found it neceffary to change his voice to them. The word the Apostle ufes does indeed properly fignify the voice, by the different turns of which it may be fuited to the fubject it is defigned to convey to the hearer. But it can hardly be thought, that Paul meant no more but changing the tone of his voice, unless there was likewise a change in the matter which he was to deliver; the phrase therefore

therefore imports, that he intended to deal more roundly with them than he had yet done, even in this epiftle: and if I mistake not much, he executes his purpofe very fully in the following chapter.

But before he enters upon that, he very wifely prepares them for it, by accommodating a well-known piece of Old-Teftament history to their cafe, as allegories are in ufe to be applied: for it is to be obferved, that the Apostle does not say, verf. 24. as our tranflators do, that these things are an allegory; but that they are alle gorifed, or applied as that fort of writing is defigned to be, to point out fomething quite different from what the words. in their plain ordinary meaning are known to exprefs; fuch as are all those parts of Scripture which go by the name of parables. Our Lord made frequent use of them, and his are by far the most perfect; many of the fame kind occur in the Old Teftament, both in the hiftorical and prophetical part of it.

But it has been faid, That thefe, as well as the inftructive fables we have from merely human writers, are made for the purpose, and no body expects historical truth

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truth in them. But as this of Abraham's two wives and two fons is a piece of real hiftory, it cannot, and ought not to be treated as allegory. Indeed it ought not: but should be treated according to its real nature, as a piece of very true and undoubted hiftory, and of very great moment But if what the Apoftle tells us of the history of old Ifrael be true, (and it would have been true whether he had told us or not), "that these things were writ

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ten for our inftruction, upon whom the "ends of the world are come," the improving these facts in parallel cafes, for inftruction and warning, is not making allegories or feigned stories of them, but putting them to their proper ufe. And those who are at pains to understand the two cafes which are here compared and parallelled, will find them fo exactly answering, that the Apostle had no manner of occafion to do any more than he has done; that is, to ftate them, and lay them fo as to be seen together at one view.

The enemies of revelation, ignorant as as they chufe to be of all these things, and fuppofing that the Apoftle was here making an argument of the cafe of Ifaac and Ishmael, and their two mothers, merely

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on the footing of his allegorical application of it, have lavifhed a great deal of profane wit on the imagined absurdity. Whereas it seems very plain, that the Apostle is not reasoning at all, but seriously warning the Galatians against the danger they seemed running into, of being found in the fame unhappy cafe with Ishmael the fon of the bond-woman, namely, to be caft out of God's family, and deprived of the inheritance: for there we find he lands his difcourse, verf. 30. In this light I must profefs myself quite at a lofs to find out the reafon of the great difficulties commentators profess to find in this discourse, and of the desperate methods bold critics have taken to correct the Apostle. The only real difficulty arifes from three words in verf. 25. which we fhall afterwards meet with in obferving how the Apostle adjusts the parallel.

The Apostle introduces it in a manner that gives a pretty colourable reason to think, that the fact here referred to was, ́in the wisdom of God, defigned and recorded on purpose, to be applied and improved as the Apoftle does here, and as the prophet Ifaiah, referred to verf. 27. had done before him. By the law here, no

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body needs be told, that he means the whole five books of Mofes, according to the divifion then (and I may fay ever fince) in ufe of the Old-Testament writings into the law and the prophets : Ye who defire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? Had not the application of the history been fo obvious before he faid any thing about it, much of the fharpness of the question would have been loft. They might have anfwered as the Ethiopian eunuch did Philip, how could we apply it, until we had it allegorized to us, as you have done?

It is indeed very obvious, and fuch as would readily occur to an attentive reader. The history is fo well known, that we need not repeat here any more than the Apostle gives us; nor is it poffible to say it better than he has done: Abraham had two fons; one by a flave or bond-woman, and another by a free. But this was not the only difference. The son of the bond-woman was conceived and born after the flesh, i. e. in the ordinary course as other children are, nor was there any one circumstance to diftinguifh him. This was not the cafe of Sarah the free-woman. VOL. III.

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