Notes, Critical and Explanatory, on the Holy Scriptures

What do you think 1 will He come to the festival 1 As some days yet remained before the festival, the discourse seems to regard the probability of His coming, or not.

G. P. "ye prevail nothing." We do not succeed in our efforts to arrest His progress.

Departed secretly. It does not imply that after He had left them He concealed Himself.

All things are ascribed to God, as the supreme Ruler, but as second- ary causes are the immediate sources of events, these are attributable to Him, according to the variety of the causes. Blindness and hardness are directly caused by the wilful perversity of man, and cannot be ascribed to God, only inasmuch as by an unsearchable decree, He abandons the sinner to himself. He blinds by withholding His light against which the sinner closed his eyes : He hardens by withholding the grace, of which the sinner proved himself unworthy.

So that the saying of Isaiah was fulfilled. It is usual with Hebrew writers to put the result as if it were the object had in view. Is. liii. i. Rom. X. 16.

Obedience to the commandment is rewarded with everlasting life.