4. By the Branches may be meant the true elect Seed that were living then in that present time, as ver. 5. and these were holy too,The Holi∣ness of the Root and Branches both one, viz. true spiritual Holiness. even as all the rest, both as the Root, First-Fruits, and whole Lump or Body, were holy; that is, all the true spiritual Seed of Abraham were like himself, viz. holy in a spiritual Sense. And now observe, he speaks of some Branches that were broken off; these seemed to be Branches, or the Children of Abraham; and so they were according to the Flesh, but were like those Branches, in Christ who bear no Fruit, and therefore taken away, John 15.2, 3, 4. He alludes to the natural Seed of Abraham, to whom he stood not as a spiritual Father or Root, but as a natural and legal Fa∣ther, as they were a National Church, and sprung from him, and these Branches were all broken off, viz. for rejecting Christ; (1.) Not broken off from the Election of Grace, for to that they did not belong, (2.) Nor were they broken off of the Gospel-Church, for they were never grafted into that. But, (3.) broken off from being any more a Church or People in Covenant with God, the whole old State and Constitution be∣ing gone, and they not closing in with Christ in the Gospel-Dispensation, Grace, and Church-State, are said to be broken off as a lost People; because not replanted or implanted into Christ, and the true Gospel-Covenant; the old being gone, quite removed and taken away, they have now no Root to stand upon, having lost their legal Priviledges, as Abraham was their Father upon that foot of Account; and they not appearing to be the true Branches or Seed of Abraham, as he was the Father of all the elect Seed, or of all that believe in Jesus Christ, they must of necessity from hence be broken off from being the People of God, or belonging to any Head or Root in a Covenant-Relation to God at all, the Dispensation being 0