Assurance and Liberty

Such things are surely written for our learning that by comfort of such scriptures we may have assurance and liberty.
And what is illustrated for our comfort in John's Gospel is taught and pressed upon us in this fervent Epistle of Paul to the Galatians. Having shown the churches in Galatia the character of his apostleship, how he got both his commission and his instructions immediately from God, and was not a debtor to flesh and blood, to Jerusalem, or to those who were apostles before him, and having told them that the life he was now living was by the faith of the Son of God, he begins to challenge them, for they were not in this state of soul.
He calls them "foolish," and tells them they had been "bewitched." How could he do less, when he detected the working of Satan in the fact that they had been withdrawn from the place where the Spirit and the truth, the cross of Christ and faith, had once put them. Then he reasons with them, argues the matter and calls forth his witnesses. He makes them judge themselves, appealing to their first estate. "Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?"