The infant heir . . . signifies the whole human race up to the advent of Christ, and, to speak more largely, right up to the end of the world. For, just as all die in Adam the first man, though they are not yet born, so all those who were born before Christ’s advent are now made alive in the second Adam. And so it is that we served the law in the fathers and are saved by grace in the sons. This understanding fits the catholic church, which asserts a single providence in the Old and New Testaments and does not distinguish in time those whom it makes equal in condition.

Guardians and trustees could be taken as the prophets, by whose words we were made ready, day by day, for the coming of the Savior, just as the law of Moses is described above as a custodian. . . . Or the phrase could be taken to refer to priests and princes, who then held power over the people and are now a reflection of God’s purpose. People are correctly said to live under tutors and overseers when, having the spirit of fear, they have not yet deserved to receive the spirit of freedom and adoption. For the age of infancy feels dread in relation to sin, fears its custodian and does not believe in its own freedom, even if it is sovereign by nature.

The elements of the world were thought to have in themselves at the same time their own motions and, as it were, certain necessary consequences of the motion of other beings, such as stars, by whose revolution human life was brought under necessity. And so humans served the elements as the stars ordained and the course of the world required.

By the elements he means new moons and the sabbath. New moons are the lunar days that the Jews observe, while the sabbath is the day of rest. Therefore, before the promise came (that is, the gift of God’s grace) and justified believers by purifying them, we were subject, like those who are infants and imperfect, to our fellow servants as though to custodians. Our pernicious freedom was the matrix of sin.

He has used the name elements of the world for those whom he called tutors and overseers above. . . . Some hold that these are angels that preside over the four elements.^[1] . . . Many think that it is the heaven and earth with their inhabitants that are called the elements of the world, because the wise Greeks, the barbarians and the Romans, the dregs of all superstition, venerate the sun, the moon, . . . from which we are liberated by Christ’s coming, knowing them to be creatures and not divinities. Others interpret the elements of the world as the law of Moses and the utterances of the prophets, because, commencing and setting out with these letters, we imbibe the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom. . . . The Mosaic law and the prophets can be taken as the elements of writing, because through them syllables and names are put together, and they are learned not so much for their own sake as for their usefulness to others. . . . Regarding our interpretation of the law and the prophets as the elements of the world, world is customarily taken to signify those who are in the world.

Why does Paul include his own character in this description? He says not When you were small, you were subject to the elements of this world but When we were small we were in servitude under the elements of this world. This does not have any reference to the Jews, from whom Paul derived his origin. Rather it refers to his identification with the Gentiles in this place at least, since he can properly join himself with the character of those whom he was sent to evangelize.

As there is a fullness in things, so there is in times. For each thing has its fullness in a full and copious perfection that abounds in everything. Christ is the fullness of things. The fullness of times is the consummation of freedom. So that his fullness may be whole and perfect Christ collects his members who are scattered, and in this way his fullness is achieved. So in the same way the fullness of times was achieved when all had become ripe for faith and sins had increased to the utmost, so that a remedy was necessarily sought in the judgment of all things. Hence Christ came when the fullness of time was completed.

The fullness of time is the completed time which had been foreordained by God the Father for the sending of his Son, so that, made from a virgin, he might be born like a man, subjecting himself to the law up to the time of his baptism, so that he might provide a way by which sinners, washed and snatched away from the yoke of the law, might be adopted as God’s sons by his condescension, as he had promised to those redeemed by the blood of his Son. It was necessary, indeed, that the Savior should be made subject to the law, as a son of Abraham according to the flesh, so that, having been circumcised, he could be seen as the one promised to Abraham, who had come to justify the Gentiles through faith, since he bore the sign of the one to whom the promise had been made.

He says his Son, not one of many, not a Son but his own. When he says his own he confirms that he has the property of eternal generation.^[1] This is the one whom he subsequently de-clares to have been born from a woman, so as to ascribe the fact of being born not to the Godhead but to the assumed body. He was made from a woman by assuming flesh and made under the law by observing the law. But that heavenly birth of his is prior to the law, while the incarnation happens later.

It is right to point out that he has linked the sending of the eternal Son with the incarnation. For he does not say he sent him to come into being as Godhead from a woman, so that we would misunderstand the sending to be the sending of the Godhead. Instead only the Son, not the Godhead, is born of a woman. Now this is peculiar to the incarnation.

A certain person thought that he had cleverly solved this question: that Mary was called a woman by the angel and the apostle because she was already betrothed. For a betrothed is in some sense a bride. Yet between in some sense and truly there is a great distance. . . . He spoke of one who was a virgin and was called woman according to a proper usage of this term with respect to the basic quality of a virgin, which is therefore vindicated by the generic term woman.

Although in this place the making might be understood of his nativity, for there is indeed a distinction between making and generation, . . . the apostle spoke in this way since the flesh of the Lord was not produced from a human seed in the virgin’s womb and made into a body but by the efficacy and power of the Holy Spirit. For it is one thing for blood to come together with an admixture of seed and cause birth, another to procreate by divine power.

He is God in that all things were made through him and nothing was made without him.^[1] He is human in that he was made from a woman, made under the law. The nativity of his flesh shows his human nature. The virgin birth is an indicator of his divine nature.

Because he is brought forth from a woman he can be said to be made, but made for this temporary purpose: to be subject to the law. . . . The Galatians were to understand from this that they had fallen into error, for the Savior himself, in whom they believed, was made subject to the law though he remained the Lord of the law.

Since the law by its precepts held people bound, as it were, only to decency of life but not to the hope of deliverance and eternity, God sent his own Son. He sent him subject to the law, that is, the law of Israel, that he might redeem those who were there and lived under the law. Now this is a great thing, that he says [Christ came] not merely to show them the way of life or to stir them up toward eternity with harsh commands but to redeem them. This is the mystery of what he performed, the redemption of all who believed in him, that they might become sons by adoption. When, therefore, such a great benefit came from Christ, nothing was to be added beside this. The law was no longer a matter of servitude.

Someone might raise the problem: If then he was made subject to the law to redeem those who were subject to the law . . . if he himself was not made also outside the law, he did not redeem those who had not been subject to the law. Another, however, will scrutinize the word redeemed more closely and will say that by the redeemed are meant those who were once of God’s party and later ceased to be so, whereas those who were not subject to the law were not so much redeemed as purchased.

He says adoption so that we may clearly understand that the Son of God is unique. For we are sons of God through his generosity and the condescension of his mercy, whereas he is Son by nature, sharing the same divinity with the Father.

Behold the whole array of those three powers through one power and one Godhead. For God, he says, who is the Father, sent his own Son, who is Christ, and again Christ, who himself being the power of God is God, . . . sent the spirit of his Son, who is the Holy Spirit.

He says of the Gentiles who believed in Christ, You are sons, having previously been enemies. There can be no doubt that believing Jews were also said to be sons of God, since they had long been called by that name. They had received the name of sons at one time as though by anticipation in order that this sonship might subsequently be understood in Christ, being incomplete without the Spirit.

There are two words that he has set down so that the former may be interpreted by the latter, for Abba means the same as Father. Now we see that he has elegantly, and not without reason, put together words from two languages signifying the same thing because of the whole people, which has been called from Jews and Gentiles into the unity of faith.

There is no doubt that one adopts a son in order to leave him an heir; but inheritance depends on the death of someone. How then can mortals be called the heirs of him who lives forever? The fact is that Scripture speaks in our own manner so that we may understand. In order to show that the Father will give from his goods those things that he is going to give his sons, it calls this inheritance.

What we say in this place we should also observe in others, that the whole human race is being treated under a single term. For all we who believe are one in Christ Jesus and members of his body.

Not to know God is not to know Christ, for God is known through Christ. But now, since Christ has appeared, who has taught me and has revealed God through himself—both himself as God and the Father through himself—it is no longer permitted not to know God.

When, however, he says, you were in servitude to those who are by nature no gods, he sufficiently proves that one true God is God by nature, by whose name the triune God is received in the most faithful and catholic bosom of the heart. Those who are by nature no gods are described by him as governors and overseers. There is no creature, whether it abides in truth by giving glory to God or fails to abide in truth by seeking its own glory—there is, I say, no creature that does not willy-nilly serve divine providence. . . . But, just as the magistrate under the imperial law does nothing but what is permitted to him, so the governors and overseers of this world do nothing but whatever God allows.

He preserves the essence of his own teaching, that those who come to Christ are the ones whom God sends and God calls, and those who know God are the ones that God knows. . . . For those who are known of God receive the Spirit by which they know God.

What follows, as it were, reintroduces a question that has already been explored. Through the whole letter he has shown that no one has disturbed the faith of the Galatians except those who were of the circumcision, who wished to lead them into carnal^[1] observations of the law as though salvation were in them. In this place alone he seems to speak to those who were attempting to return to Gentile superstitions. . . . For in saying you have reverted, since he is speaking not to the circumcised but to Gentiles, as appears in the whole letter, he does not say at all that they have reverted to circumcision, in which they had never been, but he says to the weak and beggarly elements, which you wish to serve again as before.

When he introduces the beggarly elements of this world, this seems rather to concern the pagans, who make gods for themselves even from the elements of this world. . . . Since, however, the whole of his discourse and the whole of this treatise were undertaken to reprimand the Galatians for their conversion to Judaism, and all these things are to be understood of the Jews, how do we understand you are turned again to the weak? When therefore he says the beggarly elements of this world, he means those who, understanding the law carnally,^[1] have clung to the contingent elements of this world. For the flesh is always hungering. It yearns for the sustenance of food and drink and objects of desire, all of which, however, are weak . ^[1]

Now these same elements that he has now styled weak and beggarly he called above merely the elements of the world. . . . And so I think that so long as someone is an infant . . . he is subject to the elements, namely, the law of Moses. But when after [receiving] the freedom due to an heir he reverts again to the law, desiring to be circumcised and to follow the whole letter of Jewish legal illusions, then those things that were merely the elements of the world to him before are now said to be weak and beggarly elements. . . . The law of Moses, which before was rich, affluent and illustrious, became after Christ’s advent and in comparison with him weak and beggarly. . . . The weak and beggarly elements are those unworthy traditions of the Jews, which interpret according to the letter. They were poor excuses for interpretations and commandments that were not good.^[1]

What he is saying is something like this: When you were in darkness and lived in error you were in an abject condition. But now, when you have known God or rather been known by him, how can you not bring on yourselves a greater and harsher punishment, when you suffer the same disease after so much therapy?

So that he may be seen to say this to Jews and about Jews—that is, to the Galatians, who combine the Jews’ way of life with theirs—he adds, You observe days and months and seasons and years. . . . For it is one thing to observe days, as for example to rest on the sabbath, another to observe months, as for example to observe new moons, . . . another to observe years, another again [to observe] seasons such as fasting, the Passover, the feast of unleavened bread and other things of this kind.

The observers of days are those who say, for example, Tomorrow there must be no setting out on a journey. . . . The observers of months are those who watch the course of the moon, saying, for example, Contracts must not be sealed in the seventh month. . . . Seasons are observed when people say, Today is the first day of spring, it is a festival and after tomorrow is the feast of Vulcan. . . . People pay respect to the year when they say, The first day of January is the new year, as though a year were not completed every day. . . . For if God is loved with the whole heart, there ought not to be any dread or suspicion of these phenomena so long as he is near.

By years I think he means the seventh year of release, and the fiftieth, which they call the jubilee.^[1]

Do you see the compassion of the apostle? They were being corrupted. He trembles and fears. Therefore he expresses this in a very solicitous manner, saying I labored for you, as if to say, Do not render such strenuous toils ineffectual for me. In saying I fear . . . he has both stirred them up for a contest and directed them toward better hopes.

So, let the reader choose whichever interpretation he wishes,^[1] so long as he understands that such superstitious observances of times bring great peril to the soul, so much so that the apostle adds, I am afraid, lest perhaps I should have labored in you in vain. . . . And yet if someone, even a catechumen,^[2] is caught observing the sabbath by the Jewish rite, the church is confused. As it is, innumerable members of the church say with great complacency in open view of us, I do not travel on the day after the first. . . . Alas for human sinfulness, that we only denounce what is unfamiliar, but with familiar things we tolerate them, although they may be great and cause the kingdom of heaven to be shut against them absolutely. It is for them that the Son of God shed his blood. We come to tolerate them through frequent acquaintance with them, and through increased toleration we share in them.

He is saying this to those of a Jewish background, and so he brings himself to the fore, persuading them on this ground also to depart from the ancient ways. For if you have no one else as a paradigm, it is enough simply to look at me as an instance of this change, and you will easily be encouraged. Consider then: I also was in this state and burned with great zeal for the law, and yet later I was not afraid to discard the law and depart from that way of life.

He is saying something like this: Just as I was made weak for your weakness and could not speak as to spiritual people . . . so you should also be as I am, that is, understand more spiritually. . . . This he says indeed as an imitator of the Savior, who . . . was found in fashion as a man,^[1] that we might come to the divine life^[2] from being men.

See how again he addresses them by a name of honor, remembering to be gracious . . . for just as continual flattery ruins people, so a continuously severe mode of speech hardens them. Therefore it is good to maintain a balance everywhere. See now how he defends what he has said, showing that it was not in mere indignation but in concern for them that he said what he has said. For since he has given them a deep cut he next injects this appeal like oil. And showing that his words did not come from hatred or enmity, he reminds them of the charity that they displayed toward him and carries on his argument ironically.

A disciple harms his master if he wastes his precepts and his work by his own neglect. The Galatians had not harmed the apostle, because they had observed his gospel and his commands right up to the present. . . . Or else [he means]: When I first preached the gospel to you . . . I pretended to be weak that I might be helpful to you in your weakness; did you not receive me as an angel, as Christ Jesus? When, therefore, you did me no harm at that time and thought me in my downcast and lowly state to be like the Son of God, why am I harmed by you when I stir you up to greater things?

This is an ob-scure passage and demands closer attention. I preached to you initially, he says, as if to infants and sucklings on account of your bodily weakness. . . . This economy and pretense of weakness in preaching was my own policy. You were trying to decide whether things that were rather small in themselves and were presented by me as of little account would be acceptable. . . . The passage could also be explained another way: When I came to you . . . as a lowly and despised man . . . you perceived that my lowliness and the plainness of my dress were meant to try you. . . . Or we might suppose that the apostle was sick when he came to the Galatians. . . . And this could also be said, that in his first coming to the Galatians he was subject to abuse and persecution and physical beatings from the adversaries of the gospel.

What is he saying? I was persecuted, I was flogged, I underwent many near-deaths in preaching to you, and even so you did not despise me. For that is the meaning of you did not scorn or despise me. Do you perceive his spiritual understanding? For even in the course of his self-defense he continues to exhort them anew, showing what he has suffered on their account.

The ailment of the apostle was a temptation to the Galatians. But they were found constant, not doubting as to his faith. For they could have stumbled and said, What virtue or hope is there in this faith when its minister is so humiliated? But when he had inspired their minds with future hopes, they did not fear present death for the sake of Christ’s name. . . . This caused them later to blush, because after these laudable acts they became again entrapped so as to deserve reproach.

The weakness in my body was no obstacle for you, but you received me as an angel of God, that is, as a messenger, a preacher sent from God (for that is an angel of God); and you received me like Christ Jesus, whom I was preaching to you. And so you truly received Christ Jesus, if you received me as an angel of God,^[1] in the same way you received Christ Jesus.

Do you see the absurdity of receiving him as an angel of God when pursued and persecuted but not receiving him when he commands what is necessary?

You were satisfied at the time when you received the gospel, because you were zealous at the outset. Yet now, since I do not see the finishing of the edifice, I am forced to say, where is your satisfaction?

He says this as to imply: It is not possible that I should become an enemy to those from whom I received such services. But because no one wants to be exposed when he errs, I seem to be your enemy when I justly reprimand you.

He has finished his sentence elegantly, asking: Have I become an enemy for preaching the truth to you? He says this to show that his initial bodily ailment in preaching was not so much truth as a shadow and image of truth. . . . He has tempered this sentence and made it personal because he has addressed it to the Galatians in person. . . . Today also, so long as we . . . explain the Scripture according to the letter, we are praised and respected and held in admiration. But when we make a small attempt to provoke people personally to pass on to greater things, they stop acclaiming us and become resistant.

Since emulate^[1] signifies two things—one when someone emulates what he finds pleasing because it is good and another when people are emulators because they feel envy—these people, he says, emulate you in a bad way, by which he means that they are imitators through envy. . . . When he adds the phrase so that you may emulate them [meaning] that you may follow them, he has thus used the double sense of emulation in different places, since emulation is imitation, and especially when it is also directed to what is good. . . . [He continues:] Emulate therefore better gifts^[2]—not those of Jewish law, which are not gifts and are not better; but emulate those things which are good and better gifts. That is, whatever belongs to faith and love, emulate that with regard to Christ and follow it. It is always good to emulate better things. Emulation as such is not good, but the emulation of better things is always good, and not only when I am present.

He says this with reference to those evil teachers. For seeing your conspicuous faith, he says, they are grieved and all try by every means to rob you of those goods and subject you to their own authority. For that is what he means by writing that you may emulate them.

Here he hints that his absence had caused these troubles and that the truly blessed state is one in which the disciples have the proper opinion not only when the teacher is present but also when he is absent. But since they have not yet advanced to this degree of responsiveness, he does everything to get them there.

No wonder indeed that on the apostle’s departure . . . the Galatians were changed, since even now we witness the same occurrence in the church. For never was there a teacher in the church so distinguished in speech and life. . . . We see people busy with haste and fervor about alms, fasting, sexual abstinence, relief of the poor, taking care of graves, etc. But when he departs we see that they waste away and, from loss of their food, grow thin, pale and languid. Then follows the death of all that was thriving before.

Sons are spoken of in many senses, sometimes as by love, sometimes as by nature, sometimes as by blood, sometimes even as by religion. This is what Paul means now by my sons, either because when the new birth occurs through faithful baptism, he who guides the baptized toward maturity or receives them when fully ready is called their father, or because when he calls them back into Christ he makes them his own sons.

He who in another place had spoken like a father^[1] now speaks not like a father but like a mother in Christ, so that they may recognize the dutiful anxiety of both parents.

Do you see his parental compassion? Do you see the anguish that is fitting for an apostle? Do you see how he has lamented more bitterly than women giving birth? You have ruined the image of God, he is saying. You have lost the kinship, you have exchanged the likeness. You need a rebirth and a reformation. Yet nonetheless I still call the miscarriages and the abortions my children.

Humans are conceived in their mother’s womb in order to be formed, yet only when fully formed do they go into labor. One might be surprised by his statement: You with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you. We are to understand this travail to stand for the agonies of concern that they might be born in Christ. Then he labors for them once again because of the dangers of their seduction, by which he sees them being disturbed.

This example which he has taken from a pregnant woman deserves our close attention, so that we may understand what is being said. Nature is something to be not ashamed of but revered. For just as the seed is unformed when first sown into the mother . . . then at a determined time issues into the light and is now born with difficulties as great as those with which it is later nourished to keep it from dying—so too, when the seed of Christ’s word falls into the soul of the hearer it in-creases by its proper degrees and . . . remains in jeopardy so long as the one who has conceived it is in labor. Nor does the work end as soon as it emerges This is but the beginning of a new labor, so that he may lead the infant, by diligent nourishment and study, up to the full maturity of Christ.

Christ is formed in you by nothing else but irreproachable faith and the way of gospel.

Let me show you how impatient, how incensed he is, how he cannot bear these things. For such is love: it is not content with words but seeks also to be personally present. To change my tone, he says, that is, to cry out and to make mournful noise and tears and to turn everything into lamentation. For in a letter it was not possible to show his tears and mourning.

Holy Scripture edifies even when read but is much more profitable if one passes from written characters to the voice. . . . Knowing, then, that speech has more force when addressed to those who are present, the apostle longs to turn the epistolary voice, the voice confined within written characters, into actual presence.

I used coaxing words to you just now, . . . but for the sake of that love which prevents me from allowing my sons to perish and stray forever I wish that I were now present—if the bonds of my ministry did not prevent me—and change my coaxing tone to one of castigation. It is not because of fickleness that I am now coaxing, now irate. I am impelled to speak by love, by grief, by diverse emotions.

You have put on Christ, you have become a member of the Lord, and been enrolled in the heavenly city, and you still grovel in the Law? How is it possible for you to obtain the kingdom? Listen to Paul’s words, that the observance of the Law overthrows the gospel, and learn, if you will, how this comes to pass, and tremble, and shun this pitfall. Wherefore do you keep the Sabbath, and fast with the Jews?

One should note that the whole narrative in Genesis is here called Law, not, according to the popular assumption, simply statements of what is to be done or avoided but everything that is rehearsed concerning Abraham and his wives and sons.

People might suppose that in the case of Hagar Abraham acted [merely from human desire for procreation]. But the apostle makes the reverse clear, viewing this in relation to prophecy.

Because in the Old Testament the New is prefigured, those men of God who then understood this in the manner appropriate to their times are shown to have been ministers and performers of the old covenant but heirs of the new.

He returns once again to Abraham, not repeating the same thing but because the reputation of Abraham was great among the Jews. He shows that the types have their origin in him and that present things were adumbrated in him.

Isaac was not born in the natural manner usual in marriages, or according to the body’s natural power, and yet was a lawful son. . . . Natural processes did not produce his conception, nor did the seed conceive him. For Sarah’s womb was dead both through age and through sterility. But the Word of God formed him. . . . Nevertheless the one not born according to the flesh was in greater honor than the one who was. Do not, then, be dismayed that you were not born according to the flesh, for your not being born according to the flesh makes you all the more kin to him. For conception that is not according to natural processes is more remarkable and more spiritual.

From God’s own Scripture^[1] it is evident that the birth of Ishmael also was according to promise. But the answer is that a promise is truly fulfilled in the giving of a covenant. It is one thing to bless, increase and multiply greatly, as is written in Ishmael’s case, but another to make an heir through a covenant.

Now the fact that Isaac was born of a free wife is not enough to make him signify the people who inherit the New Covenant. What is more important is that he was born according to the promise. For he could have been born according to nature’s norms from a slave and in the same way from a free woman, just as Abraham received from Katurah, whom he subsequently married, sons not according to a promise but according to nature.^[1]

Allegory is used improperly for typology. His meaning is this: This story does not say only what is evident but relates other things as well; hence it is called allegory.

Allegory is properly a term in the art of grammar. How it differs from metaphor and other figures of speech we learn as children. It presents one thing in words and signifies another in sense.^[1] . . . Understanding this, Paul (who had a certain knowledge of secular literature also) used the name of the figure of speech and called it allegory according to the usage of his own circle.

Those who are at great pains to pervert the meaning of the divine Scriptures . . . abuse this saying of the apostle’s, as though they thought that they could derive from it the power to suppress the entire sense of holy Scripture in their aspirations to speak allegorically, as if in the manner of the apostle. They fail to see how great a difference there is between their own position and that of the apostle in this passage. For the apostle does not deny the history or pick apart the events of the distant past, but he has stated them as they happened at the time, while using for his own purpose the interpretation of these events. . . . He would not have said referred to one who was born if he had not believed that person had really existed. There cannot be a simile if one takes away the historical reality itself.

These women represent the two covenants. Moses, taking the blood of a calf in a vessel, sprinkled the people, saying this is the blood of the covenant, etc.^[1] . . . The law was given on Mount Sinai. In reciting it to the people, Moses called this the book of the testament. He then sprinkled the people with blood, as I have said. This law held sinners as offenders. They soon began to be slaves of sin, as if they had been made sons of Hagar, as if returning to slavery.

Under the sure guidance of the apostle we see how clearly he shows that these two are to be taken allegorically. One may also consider the sons of Keturah under some figure of things to come. The fact that such people did these things is recorded not without purpose but under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We will perhaps find that heresies and schisms are signified in this allegory. For these are sons of the free woman, that is, of the church, and yet they again revert to life according to the flesh, not spiritually according to a promise.

Hagar, who is interpreted as sojourning, wandering or tarrying, gives birth to Ishmael. . . . No wonder that the Old Covenant, which is on Mount Sinai, which is in Arabia and nearby to Jerusalem, is stated and alleged in writing to be ephemeral and not perpetual. The sojourning of Hagar stands in contrast with perpetual possession. The name of Mount Sinai means tribulation, while Arabia means death.^[1]

Jerusalem, which he calls our mother, represents the Lord’s mystery, through which we are reborn into freedom, just as she is free. And she is called heavenly because heaven is her seat. Those to whom she gives birth will be there with her.

One and the same Jerusalem can be understood in a fourfold way: historically as the city of the Jews, allegorically as the church of Christ, anagogically^[1] as the heavenly city of God, which is the mother of all, and tropologically^[2] as the human soul, which is often upbraided or praised under this name by the Lord.

Sarah signifies the heavenly Jerusalem, having been deserted for a long time by her husband’s embraces because of her perceived sterility. For men such as Abraham did not use women to satisfy lust but for the procreation of offspring. Now to her sterility age had also been added. . . . The age of Isaac’s parents serves to signify that, new though the people of the New Covenant are, their predestination lies nonetheless with God and is that heavenly Jerusalem of old.

The church was not only barren like Sarah and did not only become rich in children like her, but it also gave birth in the same way as Sarah. For just as it was not nature but the word of God that made her a mother . . . so too in our own regeneration it is not nature of any kind but the word of God spoken through the presbyter, as the faithful know, in the waters of the font, as in a womb, that fashions and regenerates the one who is being baptized.

Who is the woman with the husband? Is it not obviously the synagogue [as married to the law]? Yet the barren one has surpassed her in childbearing. For the synagogue contains one nation, whereas the children of the church fill Greece, Africa, land, sea and the whole inhabited world. Do you see how Sarah foreshadowed our future in deeds and the prophet in words?

One might ask how he speaks of the Galatians, whom he had called fools. He accused them of starting in the Spirit and finishing in the flesh. When the apostle called them sons of promise in the way that Isaac was, he meant that he did not completely despair of their salvation and judged that they would return again to the Spirit, in which they had begun, and become sons of the free woman.

We were born not according to nature but according to grace. For, just as in Isaac’s case, it was not the law of nature but that of the gospel that fashioned us. Thus the promise given to Abraham engendered us.

And what sort of freedom is this, someone might ask, when the Jews oppress and beat the faithful, and those who are reckoned free are persecuted? For that is what happened then, as the faithful were persecuted. But do not let even this discourage you, for this too he included beforehand in the type.

Ishmael, the elder brother, persecuted him while still a nursing infant, claiming for himself the prior right of circumcision and the inheritance of the firstborn. . . . And it is aptly said that he who is born according to nature persecutes the spiritual. The spiritual one never persecutes the natural one but forgives him like an untutored brother, for he knows that he may progress.

By the words of Scripture he means those spoken of Sarah^[1] explaining the goal of the Scripture, for the sake of which he has written these things afresh, so that after the truth the type also may be explained.

We were therefore sons of the slave woman when we were liable for our sins. But, having received the remission of sins from Christ, we have been made free.

He raises and treats all these points in his wish to prove that what has occurred is not an afterthought but was prefigured from above and through many ages. Do you see how it is absurd that those who were foreordained through so many ages and had obtained freedom should happily put themselves again under the yoke of slavery?

Let us consider whether we should say that the righteous people of old were children of the slave woman or the free. But God forbid that they should be the slave woman’s. If therefore they are the free woman’s, they belong to the new covenant in the Holy Spirit, whose life-giving power the apostle contrasts with the letter that kills.^[1]