from the saints, nor foreigners. For they who shall not attain to heavenly blessings, are for- eigners. “For the Son,” saith Christ, “abideth for ever.” (John viii. 35.) “And of the household,” he continues, “of God.” The very thing which they at the first had, by means of so many toils and troubles, hath been for you accomplished by the grace of God. Behold the hope of your calling. “Being built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets.” Observe how he blends all together, the Gentiles, the Jews,236 the Apostles, the Prophets, and Christ, and illustrates the union sometimes from the body, and sometimes from the building: “built,” saith he, “upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets;” that is, the Apostles and Prophets are a foundation,237 and he places the Apostles first, though they are in order of time last, doubtless to represent and express this, that both the one and the other are alike a foundation, and that the whole is one building, and that there is one root. Consider, that the Gentiles have the Patriarchs as a foundation. He here speaks more strongly of that point than he does when he speaks of a “grafting in.” There he rather attaches them on. Then he adds, that He who binds the whole together in Christ. For the chief corner-stone binds together both the walls, and the foundations. “In whom each several building.” Mark, how he knits it all together, and represents Him at one time, as holding down the whole body from above, and welding it together; at another time, as supporting the building from below, and being, as it were, a root, or base. And whereas he had used the expression, “He created in Himself of the twain one new man;” (Eph. ii. 15.) by this he clearly shows us, that by Himself Christ knits together the two walls: and again, that in Him it was created. And “He is the first-born,”238 saith he, “of all creation,” that is, He Himself supports all things. 236 [Field’s text has not the words, “the Jews;” but as there is excellent authority for them and they suit the context better, we have left them, with the Oxford translator, in our text.—G.A.] 237 [“It is wrong to take this genitive as the genitive of apposition, as Chrysostom, for the Apostles and Prophets are not the foundation but have laid it. (1 Cor. iii. 10.) Nor are the Prophets here mentioned O.T. prophets but N.T. prophets. (cf. iii. 5; iv. 11.).—Meyer.”—G.A.] 238 Col. i. 15. i.e. “Begotten before every creature;” “begotten of His Father before all worlds.” It is explained of our Lord’s divine nature by Origen, Periarch. i. 2. Tertullian in Prax. 7. in Marcion, v. 19. S. Hilar. de Trin. viii. 50. S. Ambros. de Fid. i. 14. S. Basil in Eunom. iv. in Col. i. 15. Others understand the expression to denote the Only-Begotten considered as becoming the origin of the new creation,—as beginning in His flesh, as being the Only-Begotten, the regenerate world. Thus S. Athanasius Orat. iii. 62, 63. S. Greg. Nyss. de Perfect. p. 722. contra. Eunom. i. p. 24. iii. pp. 113, 114. S. Cyril. de Trin. iv. p. 518. S. August. in Rom. 56. Theodoret interprets the word in both ways, in loc. and in Ps. 88, 28. S. Chrysostom too, Hom. Son. Col. i. 15. may be understood ac- cording to either interpretation. Indeed they are quite consistent with each other. 144 Ephesians 2:17-22