from the technical requisitions of
Judaism, why are ye subject to its ordinances, as if ye were still
living under its rule?" as many of the best commentators agree in
saying, "tanquam viventes adhuc in Judaismo." From these
collective passages, and from others like them, we draw the
conclusion, in Paul's own words, that, "When we were children, we
were in bondage under the rudiments of the world," "the weak and
beggarly elements" of Judaism; but, now that "the fulness of the
time has come, and God has sent forth his Son to redeem us," we
are called "to receive the adoption of sons" and "become heirs of
God," inheritors of a heavenly destiny.

We think that the intelligent and candid reader, who is familiar
with Paul's epistles, will recognise the following features in his
belief and teaching. First, all mankind alike were under sin and
condemnation. "Jews and Gentiles all are under sin." "All the
world is subject to the sentence of God." And we maintain that
that condemning sentence consisted, partly at least, in the
banishment of their disembodied souls to Hades. Secondly, "a
promise was given to Abraham," before the introduction of the
Mosaic dispensation, "that in his seed [that is, in Christ] all
the nations of the earth should be blessed." When Paul speaks, as
he does in numerous instances, of "the hope of eternal life which
God, who cannot lie, promised before the world began," "the
promise given before the foundation of the world," "the promise
made of God unto the fathers, that God would raise the dead," the
date referred to is not when the decree was formed in the eternal
counsels of God, previous to the origin of the earth, but when the
covenant was made with Abraham, before the establishment of the
Jewish dispensation. The thing promised plainly was, according to
Paul's idea, a redemption from Hades and an ascension to heaven;
for this is fully implied in his "expectation of the resurrection
of the dead" from the intermediate state, and their being "clothed
in celestial bodies." This promise made unto Abraham by God, to be
fulfilled by Christ, "the law, which was four hundred and thirty
years afterwards, could not disannul." That is, as any one may see
by the context, the law could not secure the inheritance of the
thing promised, but was only a temporary arrangement on account of
transgressions, "until the seed should come to whom the promise
was made." In other words, there was "no mode of salvation by