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the rejection of the Jews, in the chapter which I examined at length, and asserting that all future grounds of favour rest in Christ alone, St. Paul breaks off abruptly, and exults that some at least of his countrymen are saved through the Gospel.

"I say then, hath God cast away his people? "God forbid. God hath not cast away his "people whom he foreknew. As formerly he "said to Elijah, I have reserved to myself

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seven thousand men who have not bowed

"the knee to the image of Baal; even so at

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this present time there is a remnant according "to the election of grace. And if by grace, "then is it no more of works; otherwise grace "is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace; otherwise work is "no

no more work. What then? Israel hath "not obtained that which he seeketh for, but "the election has obtained it, and the rest were

blinded. According as it is written, God "hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes "that they should not see, and ears that they

"should not hear, unto this day." Rom. xi. ver. 1 to 7.

The spirit of the passage is confessedly to this effect: The Jewish people are rejected, because they refused to receive salvation through Christ, and to lay aside their dependence on the Mosaic law; but those are not cast away, who (as the converts St. Paul was addressing) have embraced justification by faith, which is of grace and not of works. The question then that remains is this: who are the "foreknown?" what is the nature of their "election?" We shall soon find reason to conclude that the Apostle uses this word according to the association invariably united with it in his mind, and in the ideas of all the Jews, not in the technical sense which it has derived from theological disputes, but to signify those who enjoyed the favour of God, an honour which was formerly common to all the nation, as an "elect* people," a "holy nation;" but

* Isaiah xlii. 1," I behold mine elect, in whom my "soul delighteth:" xlv. 4, "Israel, mine elect, I have

was now proper to those alone who received the faith of Christ, and, with them, was common to the converted Gentiles. For, if we proceed a few verses onward, we find him expressing his earnest desire to excite his countrymen to join themselves to this election. 'I

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speak to you, Gentiles: inasmuch as I am "the Apostle of the Gentiles. I magnify my "office: if by any means I may provoke unto "emulation them that are my flesh, and might "save some of them." xi. 14. Now, if the remnant, according to the election of grace, were already foreknown, and elected, and the rest "blinded" by the refusal of efficacious grace, St. Paul must have been aware that

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"called thee by thy name:" lxv. 5, “I will bring forth "a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountains; and mine elect shall inherit it, and my "servants shall dwell there." St. Peter applies to the whole Christian church the very appellation which had been formerly addressed to the Jews: "Ye are a chosen "generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar "people." I. ii. 11. The idea that his Epistles were written to the Jewish converts alone, is rejected by the best commentators, as inconsistent with the internal evidence.

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there was no room left to excite others by the example of the Gentile converts, and no hope of any but those already chosen being saved: he would have known that there was no propriety in the passionate expression which begins the tenth chapter: "Brethren, my heart's "desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that

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they might be saved." It is evident, therefore, that the thing which "Israel sought in vain," was the honour of remaining the peculiar church of God: and that by "the election," the whole body of Christians is intended, who had obtained that which the Israelites through their blindness had been deprived of.

That this sense of the word election, the sense in which it was familiar to the Jews, and to St. Paul as a Jew, is the sense which we ought to bear in mind for the purpose of rightly interpreting it, I must confidently maintain. How new, how unexpected a thing was it to St. Paul, that any country but his own should be admitted to privileges which had been confined to the Jews for fifteen hundred

years! What an unlooked-for change to the Gentiles to receive the knowledge and the law of God! How natural that this fact of the choosing and calling of the Gentiles, should form a prominent subject in his addresses to them! We have seen it already introduced to silence the Jew, and satisfy the Gentile converts, in the Epistle to the Romans: it is also largely used to excite the thankfulness of the Ephesians:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our "Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with "all spiritual blessings in heavenly places "in Christ: according as he hath chosen us "in him before the foundation of the world, "that we should be holy and without blame

before him in love: having predestinated us "unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ "to himself, according to the good pleasure "of his will, to the praise and glory of his

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grace, wherein he hath made us accepted

"in the beloved: having made known unto

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us the mystery of his will, according to

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