"in time past walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience"[1] "being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world"[2] But through the rich mercy and grace of God, the eyes of their understanding were enlightened to perceive and feel their wretched state and condition as sinners before God. They saw themselves utterly cut off from all hope of pardon and reconciliation with their Maker, "by the deeds of the law" they had so often violated. All hope of working out a righteousness of their own, was immediately crushed, upon meditating the startling declaration: "Cursed is every one that continued not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them"[3] But, on beholding that "new and living way"
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[ser. i.
the god of hope
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