natural law; and the same
law was afterwards given publicly to the Jewish people and
comprehended in the ten commandments. It might also be said that
Moses borrowed the ten commandments from the fathers, to which Christ
testifies in John 7, 22. For it is certain that the fathers from the
beginning taught them and urged them upon their children and
descendants. With what consistency, then, does Paul conclude that the
fathers were not justified by the Law because it was not given until
four hundred years after Abraham's time; as if the fathers before
that time had no Law?

6. To answer this question we must observe the meaning and purpose of
Paul's words; for he so speaks because of the boasting of the Jews,
who placed their dependence on the Law and claimed that it was given
to them that they might be God's people. They considered their
attempts at keeping his Law, sufficient to procure justification. Why
else did God give the Law, they said, and distinguish us from all
heathen peoples, if we were not thereby to be preeminent before God
and more pleasing to him than they who have it not? They made so much
of this boasting that they paid no respect at all to the promise of
blessing in the coming seed, given to the fathers, nor thought that
faith therein was necessary to their justification. Thus they
practically considered it as annulled and made void, excepting for a
temporal interpretation which they put upon it--that the Messiah
would come and, because of their Law and piety, give to them the
dominion of the world and other great rewards.

THE JEWS GOD'S PEOPLE BY PROMISE.

7. To rout such vain delusions and boasts, and to show that the Jews
were not justified through the Law and did not become God's children
thereby, Paul cites the fact that the holy patriarchs, their fathers,
were justified neither by the Law of which they boast, because it was
not yet given, nor by their own deeds, whether of the natural law or
the ten commandments. God had based no promise of blessing or
salvation on their works. He had promised out of pure grace to give
them the blessing freely (that is, to give them grace or
righteousness and all eternal blessing), through the coming seed,
which had been promised also to our first parents without their
merit, when by their transgression they had fallen under God's wrath
and condemnation. Therefore, although the fathers had a knowledge of
the Law, or God's commandments, these did not help th