(b) The period of the Law began with the promulgation of the Decalogue on Sinai. The descendants of Abraham had grown into a nation and had been freed from slavery, and they were thus ready to receive a special law. Their history thereafter shows how God trained them according to the pattern of the Mosaic Law and prepared them for the providential mission, which, through the Messiah, should be theirs, of giving to the world the perfect and universal Law of the Gospel. 333. The Excellence of the Mosaic Law.--(a) The Law was good (Rom, vii. 12): it commanded what was according to reason and forbade what was opposed to reason; it had God for its Author and prepared man for the Law of Christ. (b) The Law was imperfect (Heb., vii. 19); it was given for a time when men were spiritually but children and not ready as yet for the teaching and morality of the Gospel; it forbade sin and provided punishments, but the necessary helps for observing it came only from faith in Christ, the Author of the New Law. 334. The Subjects of the Mosaic Law.--(a) The Jewish people were bound by the Mosaic Law. God had chosen Abraham by gratuitous election to be the forefather of the Messiah, and it was by gratuitous election that He gave the Jews a Law which would lend them a special holiness befitting the promises made their race. The Jews, therefore, were bound to more things than other nations, as being the Chosen People; just as clerics are bound to more things than the laity, as being the ministers of God. (b) The Gentiles were not bound by the laws peculiar to the Mosaic Code, but only by the common precepts, natural and supernatural, that were in force in the state of the Law of Nature. But it was permitted to Gentiles to become proselytes, that by observing Mosaic rites they might more easily and more perfectly work out their salvation. 335. The Duration of the Mosaic Law.--(a) The Law began when experience had proved that knowledge is not sufficient to make man virtuous, that is, at a time when, in spite of the Natural Law, the peoples were turning to polytheism and vice: “The Law was given on account of transgression” (Gal, iii. 19). (b) The Law ended when experience had shown that external observance is not sufficient for holiness, that is, at the time when Judaism was degenerating into formalism, putting the letter before the spirit of the Law: “What the Law could not do, God sending His own Son, hath condemned sin in the flesh, that the justification of the Law might be fulfilled in us” (Rom., viii. 3, 4).