Agreeably to what before the creation of the world he had determined in his decree of giving of Christ, viz., to call men from vicious living to Christianity and sanctity and purity of life, such as he will accept of coming from the sincere love of him and of our brethren: Having in his eternal purpose of mercy appointed his Son to be preached unto the world, and that as many as received his message, obeyed his commands, should be received by way of adoption into the number of his children, and live lives of obedience, of holiness and purity, unto him; a mercy attended with very rich advantages, all which have accrued to us, not from any merit or desert of ours, being supposed sinners and enemies unto him, but only from his free goodness toward us, which was pleased so to determine it. And this tends eminently to the setting forth the exceeding lustre of his mercy towards us, or of the gospel revealed to such unworthy wretches, (see note Having by that precious ransom paid for us, the blood of that dear Son of his, afforded us captives to sin a way of freedom, viz. a free pardon for all our past sins upon our present repentance and renovation: a work of the abundant favour and bounty of Almighty God, Wherein also his infinitely wise disposal hath eminently appeared in this (of all others) most probable and powerful means of bringing home sinners to new life and bliss. 9, 10. Having now by the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles also manifested to us that secret will of his, of which there can be no cause or motive rendered but his own free mercy and purposed reso- ¹ benediction in the things that belong to heaven through Christ, εὐλογία ἐν τοῖς ἀκουρανίοις ἐν Χριστῷ. ² his own, αὐτοῦ. ³ with which he hath favoured us, ἐν ᾧ ἐχαρίτωσεν ἡμᾶς, or, which he hath afforded us: for the King's MS. reads ἧς ἐχαρίτωσεν. ⁴ Or, bounty: for the King's MS. reads χρηστότητος. ⁵ which he hath made to abound, or, abundantly poured out, ἧς ἐπερίσσεψε. ⁶ his own, αὐτοῦ. ⁷ his own. ⁸ For the dispensation, or, administration, εἰς οἰκονομ. or, Against, or, According to: for the King's MS. reads Κατὰ τὴν. ⁹ to gather, ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι. [b] gather together in one] Κεφάλαιον in arithmetic signifies a sum, συναρίθμησις, the putting many members together into one; hence ἀνακεφαλαιούν, to put many severals together; and when it is used of speech, then it is to speak briefly and summarily, Eccles. xxxii. 8; and so saith Chrysostom, ἐν τύπῳ τὰ ἐπὶ μακρὸν λεγόμενα, &c., “to contract a long discourse into few words.” It is used in military affairs for the contracting or putting together scattered soldiers into one troop. In rhetoric it is the repeating and gathering the head of the former discourse or oration. In all it is the bringing into one those that were several, and so it is here the uniting and joining together of those that were disparate and severed before; the same that in the parallel place, Col. i. 20, is ἀποκυταλλάξαι and εἰρηνοποιῆσαι, bringing all to an agreement or pacification. Through the same Christ, I say, by whom we Jews have had the will of God revealed to us, now above all that we ever had before, the gospel being first preached unto us, Acts iii. 26, and those of us which have believed taken possession of, as of a patrimony or portion assigned and set apart to God, to serve him in holiness according to the secret counsel of him who had long since decreed and determined this of his own free mercy to us, [c] obtained an inheritance] Κληροῦσθαι (if ἐκληρώθημεν be the right reading) signifies, to be taken as a κλῆρος, lot or patrimony, in the passive voice and sense. Now the κλῆροι among the Hebrews were those portions of land that fell by lot to any in the division of a land or estate, as in the first division of Canaan Judah had his lot, or portion, or division, Reuben his, and God was Levi’s lot, or inheritance, or possession, as we call it. So in like manner, when in the division of the world into Jews and Gentiles God chose the Jews, they were said to be his κλῆρος or portion, Deut. iv. 20, and so believers or Christians are now styled, 1 Pet. v. 3; and in a more peculiar manner they that preached the gospel, the apostles, who seem to be here noted by the καὶ, (raising it somewhat higher than those had had the knowledge of his will, ver. 9,) and surely are the ἡμεῖς, we, ver. 12, and προηλπικόνες, the first that hoped or believed in Christ, and who, as such, were before others preferred to that dignity. And so accordingly have all that have served God in the ministry been called God’s κλῆρος or clergy, by whom therefore they are here said κληροῦσθαι, to become God’s peculiar possession or portion. But the king’s MS. hath not this word, but only ἐκλήθημεν, we were called. To this end, that we that were first converted to Christianity might publish and preach and make known the gospel to all others, and set it out as illustriously as might be. By whom also it is that ye Gentiles, though after called, yet now also having heard and believed the gospel, by which you are escaped out of your idolatrous sinful course, are in like manner secured and marked out by God for good, by receiving that Spirit which is promised to believers, and which is the mark of all those whom God receives: (see note Which is given by God as a pledge or first part of payment of that inheritance which he hath destined to us, (grace, pardon, salvation, and all the inheritance that God will instate upon his children,) and this on purpose to purchase to himself a peculiar [d] earnest] The Greek ἀρραβών is a Syriac word, עֲרָבִין, from עֲרָב, contraxit, mercatus est, fidejussit, “to make any bargain,” as it signifies Gen. xxxviii. 17, a pledge, or first part of a payment, which is an assurance or security that the rest of the whole price shall not fail to follow. This is it which in English is peculiarly called the earnest, that which confirms and assures the bargain. And so the spirit and gifts thereof after the ascension of Christ, poured out not only upon Jews but Gentiles, is the pledge or earnest paid by God, the first part of the price which he hath agreed to give for the bringing in and redeeming the Gentiles out of the hands of Satan and sin, to be the servants of the living God: those many other graces and rich treasures consequent to that gift, pardon of sin, increase of grace, and at last salvation itself, being the residue of the price, and here called κληρονομία ἡμῶν, our portion, or that which we receive in the bargain, in this great purchase of God’s, his work of redeeming of souls. [e] redemption] What περιποίησις signifies, will be seen note [d] on Considering therefore this mercy of God as to others, so particularly to you, both knowing myself the good success of my preaching the faith among you, and having received advertisement of your great proficiency in it, since the time I was among you, and of that inseparable effect and branch of it, your great charity to all Christians that want your assistance, For the time to come, I should be glad if they that are Christians, or would be esteemed so, would not cause trouble or vexation to me, for I am now otherwise employed than to need that trouble, and have greater evidence of my being a servant of Christ than to doubt of the sincerity of the discharge of my office, and my acceptance with him, howsoever I am looked on by you; for I have on me those afflictions which are marks and notes of a servant of Christ, and which testify me to belong to him, and that it is not long before he will seize me as his own peculiar. c the favour and lovingkindness of our Lord Jesus Christ— See note on the title to the epistle. # THE # EPISTLE OF PAUL THE APOSTLE TO # THE [a] EPHESIANS. # CHAP. I. PAUL, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, a to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus: That by this means of illumination ye may be furnished to all spiritual uses, discerning thoroughly what is the benefit of his calling us to Christianity, and what the glorious blessed condition of those graces of his which are distributed among Christians here (as also of those endless joys which are now instated on all penitent, obedient, faithful servants of his) as an inheritance to the children, infinitely above that Canaan that was bestowed on Abraham's posterity; 19, 20. And withal the infiniteness of his power that hath been engaged in this work toward us believers in subduing our enemies, sin, and death the punishment of sin, and raising us sinners first to a new and then to an eternal life, which was a work of the same omnipotence with that which he first evidenced in that miraculous raising of Christ from the grave, and exalting him to the highest degree of glory, next to himself in heaven, (an emblem and essay of the methods which he hath now used toward ¹⁴ having heard, ἀκούσας. ¹⁵ to the acknowledgment of him, ἐν ἐκτρώσει αὐτοῦ. ¹⁶ τίς ὁ πλοῦτος, what the riches, is left out in the King's MS. And you heathens, lying like so many carcasses, desperately gone in all kind of sins, (see note [c] Luke xv.) hath God quickened and raised to new life, ver. 5, (all between being to be read as in a parenthesis); You, I say, that for so many years together lived formerly, and securely went on in the epidemical sins of the nations, the customs of the Gentile world, following the direction of your idol false gods, (who prescribed all villainy in their worships,) that is, of Satan, that hath such power here below, and doth still exercise his power among all that have not received the gospel of Christ, Among whom we of the Gentile church of Rome, from whence I write, formerly lived, and yielded ourselves to those sensual sins and idol-worships which our lusts and our fancies were pleased with, and so went on in those heathen customs, which did universally overspread them, and were born, and lived, and continued in a damning condition, (see note [f] 1 Cor. xi.) as all other heathens did. But God, who is infinitely merciful, beyond what we can ask or think, without any thing in us to invite him to it, merely out of that kindness of his Hath by that power by which he raised Christ from the grave, raised us out of this heathen state of all kind of impietics, a state so far from meriting any such dealing, that it deserved nothing but utter desertion (and therefore it is as wonderful an act of goodness and mercy in God that we are thus rescued, and escaped out of that condition by the preaching of the gospel to us, (see note [c] Heb. xiii,) as it was for Lot, when he was by the angel led out of Sodom, and commanded to escape for his life, &c.) And as he hath quickened us out of this spiritual death, so in Christ our head he hath also in assured hope raised us up from the dead, and set us with him in heaven: for he sitting there, which is our head, we are at present not unfitly said to sit there also, and shall infallibly come thither in due time, By which means he hath given an eminent testimony to all ages that shall follow this of the apostles, how exceedingly gracious he is to those that live under Christianity, (which is called the age to come, see note [a] Matt. xi,) by those undeserved mercies shewn unto us, by giving us Christ and his gospel to be revealed to us. For you are delivered out of that heathen state by the mere undeserved mercy of God, who might justly have left you in it without ever calling you (who had so sinned against nature) out of it; and the preaching of the gospel, which hath been the means of rescuing you thus, is a mere free, undeserved gift of God, the matter of the gospel being no way to be known but by divine revelation, and God having sent Christ, and Christ his apostles, to make that known unto you, without which you had never heard, as without hearing you could never have believed such supernatural truths, (see Rom. x. 17, and note [c] Heb. xiii,) and all this an act of God's free will and merciful pleasure: Not from any merits of yours to move God to it, that so all may be imputed to him, nothing at all unto yourselves. For we are formed anew by God, and as it were out of a state of nothing (the heathen idolatry And this consideration and remembrance may be useful to you; viz. that by birth or natural generation ye were originally Gentiles, called the uncircumcised by the Jews, who had that circumcision in their flesh wrought by the hands of men; That being then without Christ, ye lived in a very distant manner from the Israelites, both in respect of customs and laws, but especially of the worship of God, were justly detested, and not permitted to live among them; and for the promises made to Abraham, ye were utterly strangers from them; and so in the first respect you had no God, nothing but idols to worship, and in the latter, no kind of hope of good to entertain yourselves with. But now, instead of that great distance formerly kept, an affinity and league hath been made between you (see Acts xx. 39) Gentiles and Jews, and Christ's blood hath been the solemn rite by which that league (after the manner of the eastern nations, which use that ceremony of blood in making leagues) hath been struck. For he is our peacemaker, and hath joined those two distant people into one, having, as it were, broke down or removed that little sept or wall in the temple that separated the court of the Jews from that of the Gentiles, and so hath laid all common, brought them both into his church to live without any discrimination of ceremonies, &c. [a] middle wall of partition] We have oft spoken of the Gentile proselytes, the second sort of which, those of the gates, which were not circumcised, were by the Jews so far accounted unclean according to the law, that they were not permitted to come into that court of the temple called holy, where the Jews were. So it is charged upon them as a fault, Ezek. xliv. 7, that they had brought into God's sanctuary strangers, &c., and Acts xxi. 28, on Paul, that he brought Greeks into the temple. The proselytes of righteousness indeed, those that had undertaken the whole law, which were circumcised, &c., they were admitted with the Jews into the inner court; but these other only into Having by his sufferings brought the Gentiles that believe to that condition, that the people of God ought not to look upon them as enemies and persecute them, as now the Judaizers do, for neglecting the ceremonies of the Mosaical law, and by the doctrine of the gospel taken away the obligingness of the Mosaical precepts, which made the conversing with the Gentiles, eating their meats, &c. unlawful also, [f] after I heard] The word ἀκούω, to hear, is answerable to the Hebrew שָׁמַע, and that signifies to know, as well as to hear, and is sometimes rendered εἰδέναι and γινώσκειν, to know: and so it seems to be used in this Epistle, ch. iii. 2. Εἶγε ἠκούσανε, If indeed ye have known, not heard; for his apostolic commission to the Gentiles, which is the thing there spoken of, was that which they to whom he had preached must needs know immediately, and not by hearsay only. And so here their faith was a thing known by him also, and not only heard, though it is also true, that their growth in the faith since he was there, and the evidences of their charity, might be brought to him by the advertisement of others. Thus ch. iv. 21. If ye have heard him is, if ye have known. [b] saints] That ἅγιοι, saints, here signify the Jews, will appear by the opposition to ξίνοι, strangers, before; for in respect of the Jews it was that they were called strangers, they being the only people of God before, and now the Gentiles, that were but λεῖ, strangers, (vulgarly known by that name,) being received in to be συμπολίται, fellow-citizens; with whom? why, with the same to whom they were strangers, that is, the Jews. Thus doth Procopius interpret it in Isa. p. 683, who accordingly calls the Jews τὸ ἐκ πατέρων ἁγίων ἔθνος, "the nation made up of the holy fathers:" which saying of his gives the reason of this phrase, why the Jews are called ἅγιοι, holy, viz. in re- Far, infinitely far above all those rulers and potentates (that have but fading power) by whom he was here put to death, yea above the highest degree of angelical powers that inhabit heaven to all eternity; And by so doing gave him victory and superiority over all his enemies, and constituted him the prince of his church, who should till the day of doom have in his hands the sole disposing of that (every one that is placed in any power therein moving regularly and subordinately to him);