+II. Is explicit in defining the channel of its fulfilment.+--"Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made; . . . to thy seed, which is Christ" (ver. 16). The promise is in the plural because the same promise was often repeated (Gen. xii. 3, 7, xv. 5, 18, xvii. 7, xxii. 18), and because it involved many things--earthly blessings to the literal children of Abraham in Canaan, and spiritual and heavenly blessings to his spiritual children; and both promised to Christ--the Seed and representative Head of the literal and spiritual Israel alike. Therefore the promise that in him "all families of the earth shall be blessed" joins in this one Seed--Christ--Jew and Gentile, as fellow-heirs on the same terms of acceptability--by grace through faith; not to some by promise, to others by the law, but to all alike, circumcised and uncircumcised, constituting but one seed in Christ. The law, on the other hand, contemplates the Jews and Gentiles as distinct seeds. God makes a covenant, but it is one of promise; whereas the law is a covenant of works. God makes His covenant of promise with the one Seed--Christ--and embraces others only as they are identified with and represented by Him (_Fausset_). +III. Cannot be set aside by the law which was a subsequent revelation.+--"The covenant, . . . the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul" (ver. 17). The promise to Abraham was a prior settlement, and must take precedence, not only in time but also in authority, of the Mosaic law. It was a bold stroke of the apostle to thus shatter the supremacy of Mosaism; but the appeal to antiquity was an argument the most prejudiced Jew was bound to respect. "The law of Moses has its rights; it must be taken into account as well as the promise to Abraham. True; but it has no power to cancel or restrict the promise, older by four centuries and a half. The later must be adjusted to the earlier dispensation, the law interpreted by the promise. God has not made two testaments--the one solemnly committed to the faith and hope of mankind, only to be retracted and substituted by something of a different stamp. He could not thus stultify Himself. And we must not apply the Mosaic enactments, addressed to a single people, in such a way as to neutralise the original provisions made for the race at large. Our human instincts of good faith, our reverence for public compacts and established rights, forbid our allowing the law of Moses to trench upon the inheritance assured to mankind in the covenant of Abraham" (_Findlay_).