"_Such also was to be the state of the Christian Church after our Lord's ascension_."--And therefore, as I think, St. Peter applies to the Christians of Asia Minor the very terms applied to the Jews living in Assyria or in Egypt; he addresses them as [Greek: parepidaemois diasporas], (1 Peter i. 1,) that is, as strangers and sojourners, scattered up and down in a country that was not properly their own, and living in a sort of banishment from their true home. That the words are not addressed to Jewish Christians, and therefore are not to be understood in their simple historical sense, seems evident from the second chapter of the Epistle, verses 9, 10, and iv. 2,3. * * * * * NOTE G. P. 315. "_Not only an outward miracle, but the changed circumstances of the times may speak God's will no less clearly than a miracle_," &c.--What I have here said does not at all go beyond what has been said on the same subject by Hooker: "Laws, though both ordained of God himself, and the end for which they were ordained continuing, may, notwithstanding, cease, if by alteration of persons or times they be found insufficient to attain unto that end. In which respect why may we not presume that God doth even call for such change or alteration as the very condition of things themselves doth make necessary?... In this case, therefore, men do not presume to change God's ordinance, but they yield thereunto, requiring itself to be changed."--_Ecclesiastical Polity_, b. iii. § 10. * * * * * NOTE H. P. 320.