"Let us go on unto perfection."
I. HERE IS A STATEMENT MADE WITH REGARD TO THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF THE RELIGION WE PROFESS. He tells where they are revealed, and what they are. And, first, he would have his readers to understand that the principles of the doctrine of Christ are the "first principles of the oracles of God"; he uses the two expressions interchangeably, as if they both meant the same thing. His immediate object was to assert that the " doctrine of Christ," at which the Hebrews stumbled, was in reality no fresh revelation, but that all its rudiments had been taught in their own Mosaic Scriptures. A deep truth was contained in the saying of the ancient Church, "There were Christians on earth before there were Jews." Even from Paradise to Patmos, "the principles of the doctrine of Christ" have been taught with increasing gradations of development, as "the first principles of the oracles of God" — old, as well as new. This being established, Paul proceeds ...