d had been awakened with special vividness, as in
the times after Alexander the Great, in which Roman and Greek
heathenism became more and more _effete_, and rapidly hastened on
towards ruin. In the time of Christ, both of these causes co-operated.
If there were soundness in the opinion now generally prevalent,
according to which the Church of the New Testament stands quite
independent of the Congregation of Israel, having originated from a
free and equal union of believers from Israel, and of those from among
the Gentiles, [Pg 219] then indeed the promise now before us would have
no longer any reference to New Testament times. The New Testament
Church would be a generation altogether different, and no longer
acknowledge Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as their fathers. But, according
to the constant doctrine of the Old as well as of the New Testament,
there is only one Church of God from Abraham to the end of the
days--only one house under two dispensations. John the Baptist proceeds
upon the supposition that the members of the New Testament also must be
children of Abraham, else the covenant and promise of God would come to
nought. But as the bodily descent from Abraham is no security against
the danger of exclusion from his posterity--of which Ishmael was the
first example--and as, so early as in the Pentateuch, it is said, with
reference to every greater transgression, "This soul is cut off from
its people," so, on the other hand, God, in the exercise of His
sovereign liberty, may give to Abraham, in the room of his degenerate
children after the flesh, adopted children without number, who shall
sit down with him, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God, whilst
the sons of the kingdom are cast out.--After these remarks on the
promise to the Patriarchs, there can be no longer any difficulty in
making out the historical reference of the announcement before us. It
cannot refer to the bodily descendants of Abraham, as such, any more
than the promise of a son to Abraham was fulfilled in the birth of
Ishmael, or than the Arabs stand related to the promise of the
innumerable multitude of his descendants,--a promise which is repeated,
in the same extent, to Isaac and Jacob, although they were not the
ancestors of the Arabs. Degenerate sons are not a blessing; they are no
objects of promise, no sons in the full sense. Every one is a son of
Abraham, only in so far as he is a son of God. For this reason the
phrases "sons of Israel