The Great Commentary (Mossman/Cobb English)

Even so we. That is the Jews, whom he so describes in chap. iii. 25. When we were children . Like boys untaught in the knowledge, and therefore in the love of God and His righteousness. Under the elements of the world. 1. Serving the letter of the Old Law. For the law, as being imperfect, was first given to the world, i.e. 9 to the Jews, and through the Jews to all nations, to teach them the rudiments of faith and piety. But the Gospel, succeeding the law, teaches their perfection. As Justinian calls his Institutes the “elements of the law,” and as we speak of the elements of grammar, philosophy, and music, so here the Apostle speaks of the law as elementary. As boys, says Anselm, learn the elements, and their conjunction, but do not understand the words and sentences composed from them until they proceed to higher branches of learning, to which they can only attain by first learning the elements, so the Jews had the elements in their ceremonies, of which they did not understand the meaning, until by these elements, as their elevators, they come to the faith of Christ S. Paul calls the men of the world by the name of the world. The reference is first to the Jews, then, by metonymy, to all men. God willed to open, in one corner of the world a school, where He might teach men the rudiments of faith and piety, until He should open everywhere schools where they were most learnedly taught THE ELEMENTS OF THE WORLD 287 2. More properly and naturally the elements of the world are the days, months, times, and years of verse 10. These he calls elements by an allusion to Gen. L, where it is said that God created the elements of the world in seven days, and then rested on the seventh day, and instituted the Sabbath as a memorial among the Jews of His creative rest The days are thus called elements , because in them the elements were created, and their creation represented by metonymy on the Sabbath. Or they may be so called because time governs the world and all in it, as the generation, corruption, and succession of things. Accordingly, in grateful recollection of God's providence, disposing by sun and moon the succession of the seasons and of day and night, He willed that Sabbaths, new moons, and other days should be observed by the Jews, that they might continually recognise God as the Creator and Preserver of all things, through the instrumentality of these stated feasts, till, being better taught by the Gospel, they should worship God in spirit and in truth. Erasmus, however, thinks that the world here by catachresis stands for whatever has the nature of visible And transitory things, such as the ceremonies of the Old Law, which, in CoL ii. 20, he calls “ the rudiments of the world.” But this is not the usual meaning of the word with the Apostle, nor is it the meaning in Col. ii. 20, as I will prove when I come to comment on it. Cf. also infra, notes on verse 9. We were in bondage . Theophylact explains this from the analogy of the child under tutors. As this child differs nothing from a slave, so, when we were children in the knowledge of Christ and the love of God, we were, like slaves, under the aforesaid elements of the world, and under the tutorship of the Old Law

But when the fulness of the time was come. When the time fixed beforehand for the end of the law and the beginning of the Gospel was fully come, we were transferred from the servitude of the law to the freedom of sonship. S. Bernard (Serm. 1 de Adventu) explains the passage somewhat differently : “ The fulness and abundance of temporal things had brought about forgetfulness and famine of eternal things . It was at the moment when temporal things 288 THE EPISTLE TO THE held sway that eternal things opportunely arrived ” But this is a symbolical rather than literal explanation. Literally, the fulness of time is not the abundance of temporal things, but the full completion of the pre-determined time. God sent forth His Son , as His legate or Apostle, with full instructions to act on His behalf. He sent His Son, not by change of place, as though He left heaven and arrived at earth ; but the Son, remaining where He was, in heaven and on earth, took a new role, viz., that of a Human Ambassador from God to man. Made of a woman . Woman here denotes, not corruption, but the female sex, and applies as well to a virgin as to another woman. Made of a woman denotes conception without a male, from the sole substance of the mother. From this it clearly follows that Christ did not assume a heavenly body, which He brought to earth by passing through the Blessed Virgin as through a pipe, as the Valentinians formerly, and the Anabaptists now teach, but that His body was formed from the Virgin. Made under the law . Though Christ, even as man, was not subject to the law, because He was still the Son of God, the giver of the law, yet of His own free-will He observed it, and of His own free-will submitted Himself to circumcision, and to its other ceremonial enactments. Made , therefore, denotes, not obligation, but practice ; not right, but fact. To redeem them that were under the law . By paying the price, might bestow on them Christian liberty. The reference is to the bondage of the law, not of sin. That we might receive the adoption of sons, (i.) The Son of God was made of a woman Son of man, that He might make the sons of men sons of God. " God was made man ,” says S. Bernard, “ that man might be made God . 19 (2.) This adoption is by grace, by which we obtain not only a right to be heirs of God the Father, but also participation in the Divine Nature, the Holy Spirit Himself, and sonship with God. (3.) Although all the righteous, even before Christ, were sons of God by adoption, yet the Apostle calls them all slaves — (a) because, although the righteous were truly sons of SONS, NOT SLAVES 289 God, yet they had not the status of sons, but only of slaves, being under the law, and consequently under the spirit of servile fear, (b) Because they had not the right of sonship through the law, but through their faith in Christ yet to come ; and they belonged, therefore, more to the New Law than to the Old, as Augustine proves happily and exhaustively (contra Duos Epp . Pelag. cap . 4). (c) Because they lacked the fruit of adoption, in being unable to discern their heavenly inheritance before Christ revealed it (d) Because Christ,, in setting us free from the yoke of the law, substituted for it in the New Law the one spirit of adoption and of love

The Spirit of His Son. The Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. This is an argument from effect to cause, as when we say, " Where there is smoke there is fire.” God first sent forth the Spirit of His Son to us, from which it followed that we became sons of God. Because we are sons, therefore, we know that He hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son, else should we not be sons. Because , therefore, denotes not so much the efficient cause as the logical reason. Or, better still, we may connect the particle because with the cry, “ Abba, Father.” God hath sent forth His Spirit, not to make you sons, but to make you cry, a Abba, Father” Crying. Causing you to invoke God ardently, confidently, with filial affection. It is the clamour of the heart, not of the mouth, as in Exod. xiv. 15. Abba . The Hebrew Ab, the Syriac Abba, which in Greek and Latin becomes Abbas , denotes father. See ray notes to Rom. viii. 15. As this place is a terror to the lukewarm, who rarely experience this feeling of filial prayer, so does it inspire the devout, who seek it within with a hope of salvation and enjoyment of their heavenly inheritance

Through infirmity of the flesh I preached the Gospel unto you . S. Jerome explains this to mean that he gave them the first and weak elements only of the faith, because of their weakness with regard to spiritual things. He also gives as a second interpretation of infirmity of the fleshy Paul's sicknesses and headaches, and as a third, his persecutions, poverty, and sufferings in general, which might make him seem an Apostle, weak, miserable, and despicable, and so unable to gain the respect of the Galatians

And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not Erasmus takes temptation in the active sense, viz., as though Paul had tempted the Galatians by his unattractive presence and speech. But it is better to take it passively, as being identical with the object of temptation. The meaning then is : You did not despise me in my weakness and my abject condition, which had the effect of making me a temptation to you, but you received me as an angel, nay, as Christ Himself. [ Note . — The Vulgate is : “ And your temptation which was in ray flesh.”]

They zealously affect you. The Judaisers do all they can to woo you to espouse their cause, and to bring you into subjection to their law, but their object is not good. They would exclude you. Some texts read include here, which gives JUDAISING CRAFT 295 a very good meaning. These Judaisers are like crafty wooers, who, when they are seeking to win a wealthy wife, show her every kind of honour and service, and humour her whims in everything; but when they have attained their object, they shut her up, appoint custodians of her person, and treat her as a slave. They are now promising you, Galatians, great things ; but they want to shut you up under the law, and shut you out from the liberty that is in Christ That ye might affect them . It is not friendship that animates them. They want to gain your confidence, that you may surrender to them, and become their disciples, and give them ground for public boasting. Ver. 1 8. — But it is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing. It is good to imitate others, but only in what is good. [The Vulgate reading is in the imperative : Be zealously affected always to the good in what is good 1 ] Observe that the first good can be taken in the neuter, for what is good, or in the masculine. If the latter be read, then the meaning is : Do not be zealously affected towards Judaism, which is evil, but take as your models good Christian men like myself, whose manner of life among you ye know. You followed me when I was with you ; you should do the same in my absence, for a good man is always to be imitated, whether absent or present This is a hint that in the Apostle’s opinion it was his absence which had been the cause of their lapse into Judaism

My little children . I begat you to Christ by the Gospel, and now that you have left Him for Judaism, I travail in birth of you again, till you learn to look to Christ for grace and justification, and not to the law. “ The Apostle here,” says Chrysostom, “ speaks of a mother’s anxiety over her children. You see the feelings of a mother rather than of a father ; you see his nervousness , and the cry of pain , much more agonising than that of a woman in travail As the Blessed Virgin bore Christ in the flesh but without pain, so did Paul labour with Christ spiritually, though with pain and grief, and strive to form the Galatians for Christ, that He might be all in all to them. 296 THE EPISTLE TO THE S. Ambrose (de Isaac et Animd , c. 8) says, with equal piety and point.: u There [in the Cross and in baptism] did your mother travail ; there did she who bore you labour. There are we bom again, for they are brought forth in whom the image of Christ is formed. He tells us how Christ was formed in His Spouse. Set me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thine arm. Christ is the seal upon the forehead, that we may ever confess Him ; on the heart, that we may always love Him ; on the arm, that we may always work for Him ; so that, if it be possible. His whole likeness may be expressed in us, and He be our seal whom God the Father* hath sealed.” Let those note who desire to convert souls to Christ, that they must labour and toil like a woman in travail. Hence the question is asked in Job xxxix. 1: lt Knowest thou the time when the wild goats of the rock bring forth f or canst thou mark when the hinds do calve ? . . . They bow themselves, they bring forth their young ones, they cast out their sorrows ” — where the reference is to the belief that the hinds suffer more acutely than most animals in parturition, a belief that was shared by Aristotle and Pliny* S. Gregory takes this passage mystically of preachers who, like hinds in labour, bring forth offspring to Christ with tears and sorrow. “I see,” he says, “that Paul is like a hind bringing forth its young with great pain ; for he says, * My little children, of whom 1 travail in birth again l See the pain, see the labour he suffered; even after he was delivered he was compelled to give life again to his offspring when it had perished ” (Morals xxx. 21). Let bishops, too, learn from S. Paul to be not so much fathers as mothers to their subjects, as S. Bernard says excellently (Serm. 25 in Cant.) : “ Learn to be mothers, not lords , to those under your charge. Seek to be loved rather than feared ; and if sometimes there is need of severity, let it be that of a father, not of a tyrant.”

/ desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice. I would wish to say orally what a letter cannot sufficiently express ; I would wish to coax, to beseech, to implore you, to treat you as a mother does her children, to manifest in every way a mother’s affection, that I might persuade you to do what I wish. ISHMAEL AND ISAAC 297 See what love makes men do. Paul makes himself a father, and becomes a boy with his children. So King Agesilaus, to amuse his boy, would lay aside his purple and his sceptre, to ride on a stick for him ; and when one of his court remarked on his levity, he retorted : “ Hold your tongue, for when you have children of your own , then I will give you leave to laugh at your kings folly” So here Paul would say that a mother’s love knows no bounds, no shame ; for it no toil is too great, nothing is too trivial or too shameful. I stand in doubt of you. “ I am ashamed,” as some render it, but wrongly. The meaning is : I am perplexed ; I do not know what to say to you to persuade you. Maldonatus gives two interpretations : (1.) I have not obtained the expected fruit of my preaching, therefore I am confounded; and (2.) I do know whether you are Christians or Jews

Do ye not hear the lawt A vigorous question. If you will not listen to me, will you not listen to the law, that you think so much of, for it will point you from itself to Christ ?

But Jerusalem which is above is free 9 which is the mother of us all The Christian Church, typified by Sarah, the mistress, is contrasted with the Jewish synagogue, typified by Hagar, the bondwoman, in four points: It is above; it is Jerusalem; it is free; it is a fruitful mother. 1. Why is it said to be above 1 Because (a) Christ, its Head, 302 THE EPISTLE TO THE descended from heaven, and thither ascended to rule His Church from above, (b) Because the Church is perfected by heavenly things, faith, hope, and charity, which come from above, (c) Because the efficacy of the Sacraments is from above, and shows God Himself present in His Church, as though He had come down from above. ( d) Because her conversation is in heaven, and there with her Spouse are her heart and treasure. ( e ) Because she is striving for her eternal crown laid up in heaven. Cf. Rev. xxl 2. 2. Why is she called Jerusalem t Because Jerusalem means the vision of peace. This God provides for His Church, so that she rejoices, not in earthly but in heavenly peace, according to the promise of her Lord : “ Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you” (S. John xiv. 27). This peace comes from a good conscience towards God, self, and all men. Literally too the Church is entitled to be called Jerusalem, because there she had her beginning, as the Jewish Church had at Sinai Hence the prophets repeatedly designate the Christian Church by the names of Sion or Jerusalem. 3. Why is she called free f Freedom is fourfold : ( a ) Civil, to which is opposed the status of slaves. ( b ) Moral by which is excluded slavery to passion and lust, to the fear of adversity. In this the Stoics placed the perfection of happiness, and desired that every man should be able to say of himself : Though the world were shattered around him, its fragments would strike, but not daunt him (Mor. Odes , iii. 3, 7). (c) Spiritual springing from that perfect charity which casts out fear, by which we are able to serve God, not in servile fear, but in filial love ; not with material ceremonies, but in spirit and in truth. This is the freedom in the Apostle’s mind here, if) Celestial , which excludes all slavery of mind or body to pain, and is the perfect bliss of mankind. The Church already enjoys moral and spiritual liberty ; by hope and desire it tastes beforehand the heavenly freedom it is one day to possess. 4. Why is she called a mother t Because out of Gentile barrenness, which was subject to devils, the Church has been collected, and has borne, and still bears, many spiritual children to Christ, FRUITFULNESS OF THE CHURCH 303 and this not from Jews alone, but from Jews and Gentiles, without distinction

Rejoice , thou barren . Rejoice, O Church, called out of the Gentiles ; thou who wast once barren, without faith in God, and formerly not wont to bear children to Him — now that thou art espoused to Him break forth and cry. The synagogue, whose husband was the law, or even God Himself, not as a father tender, but as a lawgiver terrible, brought forth Jews only according to the flesh. But the Church embraces as a mother all the nations that believe on Christ. Therefore the synagogue has borne to God comparatively a small number of spiritual children. She bare the Prophets, the Patriarchs, and a few other righteous men, and that not in her own strength, but by the power of Christ, the father of the New Covenant. The Apostle quotes Isa. liv. 1. The Jews indeed interpret the passage of their return to the earthly Jerusalem. The Millenarians understood it of the thousand years of sensual happiness which they pretended that the Saints would spend on earth after the Day of Judgment, as Jerome testifies of them. S. Paul, however, makes it clear that Isaiah was speaking of the happiness and fruitfulness of the Christian Church. Of this S. Ambrose writes very beautifully (de Virgin, lib. i.) : “ The Church is immaculate in conception, fruitful in offspring , a virgin in chastity , a mother in her family . We are born of a virgin who has been impregnated, not by a man but by the Spirit ; who brings forth, not with bodily pain but with angelic rejoicing ; who feeds her children with milk , not of earth but of the Apostles. She is a virgin in the Sacraments , and d mother in the virtues she produces. She is a mother to the nations , and Scripture testifies to her fruitfulness , saying: 1 The desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband .* Whether we interpret this of the Church among the nations , or the soul of each individual in either case she is married to her heavenly Spouse by the word of God without any deviation from the path of chastity.” S. Jerome, too, says, in his comments on this passage : “ The Church , long time barren , bore no children before Christ was bom of the Virgin ; but when she bore to Abraham , i.e., the elect 304 THE EPISTLE TO THE father , Christ as Isaac, the laughter of the world whose very name spoke of heavenly mysteries, then she brought forth many children to God Abraham in Hebrew is (according to Jerome) the elect father, with a mighty sound. 1. Abraham was first called Abram, the lofty father, and as such begat Ishmael from Hagar. Then when he entered into a covenant with God, and received the promise of the birth of Isaac, and of the possession by his seed of the land of Canaan, his name was changed to Abraham, the father of a great multitude, i.e., of a numerous offspring, to be begotten of Isaac according to the flesh, and of Christ according to the spirit This is a sounder interpretation of the name than that given by Jerome. 2. Symbolically, Abraham represents God. From Hagar, the bondwoman, i.e., from the synagogue, he begat Ishmael, the bondservant, i.e., Moses and the Jews, who were under subjection to the Old Law. To them Abraham was a lofty father, giving the law in thunder from the heights of Sinai, and manifesting himself as a great and terrible Lord. On the other hand, Abraham, i.e., God, begat from Sarah, the freewoman, i.e., the Church, Isaac, laughter, who represented Christ and His followers, heirs of the promises. To them Abraham was the father of a great multitude, gathered by Christ out of all nations, and regenerated by faith and baptism. Or if we take S. Jerome's interpretation of Abraham as denoting the elect father with a mighty sound, then we see the fulfilment of the name in the preaching of John Baptist, of Christ, and the Apostles, who with a loud voice called all nations to enter into the kingdom of God. 3. Isaac, i.e., Christ, is said to be bom of Sarah, i.e., the Church, not as though the Church were actually the mother of Christ, or existed before Him, but because, in the Divine mind, the Church was, as it were, prior to Christ, and stood for His mother. For God first called the synagogue into existence, and then substituted for it the Church. Consequently, He had in His mind the idea of the synagogue first, of the Church second ; and out of this He decreed that Moses should be born as the eldest son of this idea. ISHMAEL AND ISAAC 305 and that he should reduce to actuality the remaining parts of the idea by instituting the synagogue. Similarly, He willed the creation of the Church, and the birth of Christ, as the first-born of His idea of the Church, who should carry out the idea, and found the Church of which He should be Himself the chief corner-stone. Hence Christ and Christians are called children of the promise and of the predestined purpose of God, because their existence was the product of the Divine will as the father, and of the Divine thought as the mother

Now we, brethren , as Isaac was, are the children of promise. Since he was born of one barren through age — not according to the flesh, but according to the promise of God

He that was born after the flesh . Ishmael, born naturally of Hagar, persecuted Isaac, bom supernaturally of Sarah, according to the Divine promise, and so a type of the spiritual children of the New Law. The reference is to Gen. xxi. 9. From a comparison of these two passages it is evident that the mockery mentioned was a sort of persecution, the sort of sport that cats have with mice. So in 2 Sam. ii. 14: “Abner said to Joab, Let the young men now arise and play before us,” where the play was a mortal combat. Jerome and others think that the reason why Ishmael persecuted Isaac was because his envy was stirred up by the festivities indulged in at Isaac’s weaning, and because he was jealous of the birthright assigned to his brother by promise. Hence it appears that he was hostile to the promised Seed, i.e., to Christ So it is now . As formerly Ishmael mocked and persecuted Isaac, so now have the Jews mocked and crucified Christ, the King of liberty, and are still pursuing with bitter hatred His followers. So too are they persecuting you, O Galatians, that they may enslave you, and turn you from the right way. See the comments of Jerome and Rupert on Gen. xxi. 9

Nevertheless what saith the scripture l Cast out the bondwoman and her son. Although Abraham shrank from this proposal of Sarah, yet God approved it, and bade Abraham do as Sarah demanded, not only because her demand was lawful and right, but VOL. 11. u 306 THE EPISTLE TO THE also because his action would be a type of future events. The ejection of Hagar and Ishmael would typify the rejection of the Jewish synagogue, and its exclusion from the blessings of the Church, for persecuting Christ and His followers. Allegorically, Christians, as freemen, are inheritors of Abraham’s blessing, while the Jews are shut out from it, because they are envious bondmen, persecutors of Christian freemen, just as Ishmael was forbidden to share with Isaac the paternal roof. The bondman was driven away from the freeman. CHAPTER V I He moveth them to stand in their liberty , 3 and not to observe circufncision : 13 but rather low, which is the sum of the law. 19 He reckoneth up the works of the flesh , 22 and the fruits of the Spirit , 25 and exhorteth to walk in the Spirit. S TAND fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. 2 Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. 3 For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. 4 Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law ; ye are fallen from grace. 5 For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. 6 For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision ; but faith which worketh by love. 7 Ye did run well ; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth ? 8 This persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you. 9 A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. 10 I have confidence in you through the Lord, that ye will be none otherwise minded : but he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be. 11 And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution ? then is the offence of the cross ceased. 12 I would they were even cut off which trouble you. 13 For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty ; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. 14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this ; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 15 But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. 16 This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. 17 For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh : and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. 18 But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. •19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 20 Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, 5°7 308 THE EPISTLE TO THE Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23 Meekness, temperance : against such there is no law. 24 And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. 25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. 26 Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another. SYNOPSIS OF THE CHAPTER i. S. Paul proceeds to urge the Galatians not to submit to the yoke of the Old Law, lest they be deprived of the fruits of Christ’s righteousness, since in Him neither circumcision nor uncircumcision will avail anything, but only faith which worketh by love. ii. He invites them (ver. 13) to Christian liberty, and shows that it is based on charity, which causes him to pass from the dogmatic to the ethical portion of the Epistle. iii. He points out (ver. 17) how the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and then he enumerates the works of each respectively