spirit in confirmation, but rather the joint witness of the Holy Spirit and the

spirit of the believer to the same blessed fact.

Closely associated with the law of adoption was that of the Roman will.

The Pr`torian will was put into writing, and fastened with the seals of seven

witnesses (cf. Rev. 5 and 6).  There is probably a reference to this type of

will in Ephesians 1:13,14:

`In Whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit

of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption

of the purchased possession, unto the praise of His glory'.

W.E. Ball translates the latter part of the passage: `Until the ransoming

accomplished by the act of taking possession (of the inheritance)':

`When a slave was appointed heir, although expressly emancipated by the

will which gave him the inheritance, his freedom commenced not upon the

making of the will, nor even immediately upon the death of the testator,

but from the moment when he took certain legal steps, which were described

as "entering upon the inheritance".  This is "the ransoming accomplished

by the act of taking possession".  In the last words of the passage "to

the praise of His glory" there is an allusion to a well-known Roman

custom.  The emancipated slaves who attended the funeral of their

emancipator were the praise of his glory.  Testamentary emancipation was

so fashionable a form of posthumous ostentation, the desire to be followed

to the grave by a crowd of freedmen wearing the "cap of liberty" was so

strong, that very shortly before the time when St. Paul wrote, the

legislature had expressly limited the number of slaves that an owner might

manumit by will' (W.E. Ball).

This Roman custom helps us to see the link that there is between Romans 8

and Ephesians 1:13,14, as well as with the book of Ruth.

`The purchased possession'.  Had the apostle simply intended that the seal

and the earnest guaranteed the entry into the promised inheritance at last, it

would have been easy to have said so.  This somewhat strange expression

challenges us, and demands fuller inquiry.

Peripoiesis, the word translated `purchased possession' in the A.V., and

`God's own possession' in the R.V., occurs five times, thus:

The redemption of the purchased possession (Eph. 1:14).

To obtain salvation (1 Thess. 5:9).

To the obtaining of the glory (2 Thess. 2:14).

To the saving of the soul (Heb. 10:39).

A peculiar people (1 Pet. 2:9),

to which we should add the two occurrences of the verb (Acts 20:28; 1 Tim.

3:13), both of which are translated `purchase'.  We have already found that

light was to be obtained by studying the teaching of the Old Testament

concerning the Kinsman-Redeemer.  Let us consider those passages where the LXX

employs this word, peripoiesis.

Peripoiesis the noun occurs in 2 Chronicles 14:13; Haggai 2:10 (LXX) and

Malachi 3:17 and translates two Hebrew words.  Peripoieo the verb occurs over