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penitent heart, &c.-This is still in the way of solemn expostulation, under a deep sense of the fatal character of the delusion charged upon them. The state of the heart guilty of this error is described to be hard and impenitent. And it is impossible to conceive of a state of the feelings more obdurate and perverse, than exists in those who take occasion habitually to sin from the very goodness of the Being sinned against. Hardness, which is not moved by so many and constant proofs of God's hatred to sin, and his severity in punishing it, which everywhere surround them; and remained unaffected by that very kindness and condescension of God which they celebrate in their sacred songs, and of which they boast as abundant towards themselves as a people. It awakened no generous sentiment, no gratitude, no soft remorse. From this obduracy impenitence followed; for, so long as their consciences were lulled to sleep by these delusions, they were incapable of repentance or godly sorrow for sin. Such persons are represented as treasuring up to themselves wrath against the day of wrath, laying up wrath as in a storehouse through a whole life of repeated offences, until the final day of account, which is called the day of wrath, as to them and to all sinful men, because of the full and unmitigated infliction of the punishment due to their offences, which shall then take place; and then, with respect to all, a day of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, when there shall be an illustrious display of the perfect equity and justice of the decisions of the Judge of the whole earth, before angels and men. However severe, therefore, the future and endless punishment of the wicked may now appear to any,

we are, on this awful subject, to recollect that we know the case very imperfectly, but that the last day shall be a day of revelation, as well as judicial decision, and that the subject of this revelation will be the righteousness of this very judgment, to express which the Apostle appears to have formed the expressive compound word δικαιοκρισία.

Verse 6. Who will render to every man, &c.-This necessarily follows from the appointment of a day of general judgment, and from the righteous character of the Judge, both which the Jews admitted; but this admission, like the other above pressed upon them by the Apostle, was fatal to their infatuated conclusion. They depended upon their own safety, as Israelites, although they acknowledged they were obnoxious as sinners; but, if God will render to every man according to his deeds; if, in other words, a man's works, not his national or church privileges, are to be taken into account at that day, except as the latter may aggravate the guilt of the offences committed, then could the sinful Jew have no hope. The very principles of that better system of religion of which he boasted subverted his hopes of impunity. This exact process of strict reward he proceeds to describe in language of great force and beauty.

Verse 7. To them who by patient continuance, &c.—Continuance in well doing, and especially patient continuance, as it supposes opposition, difficulties, and sometimes persecution, manfully sustained and overcome, necessarily implies such a habit as arises from a renewed nature. Nor, indeed, are we to confine the well doing to such acts as are visible to men, but to God also; to secret good

actions, to the efforts of the soul towards God, and the right government and exercise of the affections, as faith, hope, and love. Those who urge this in proof of justification by works usually take too narrow a view of the case. The doing is well doing, which must be in principle, as well as in overt act; and therefore must either be the result of an innocent, unfallen nature, which man has not; or a renewed nature, which proceeds only from the grace of God's Holy Spirit. This, therefore, in Jew or Gentile, was necessary to well doing; for God cannot be supposed to reward the semblance of virtue. This renewed and holy habit, therefore, being the result of that gracious constitution under which all men are placed by the economy of redemption, and implying, as it necessarily must, the previous restoration of such persons to the divine favour through the Mediator, "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," this justification at the last day is placed on its true ground: it can but be declaratory of a previous state of acceptance and approval attained through the joint effect of a constitution of grace and mercy, and man's availing himself of it, according to the degree of his knowledge of it. But, in fact, it will be seen that the apostle chiefly uses the term justification in the simple sense of the pardon of sin; and justification at the last day, in the sense of the forgiveness of sin, we are forbidden by the tenor of scripture to admit. Sin must be forgiven here; and man must die in a state of reconciliation with God, or he dies without hope. "If ye die in your sins, where I am ye cannot come."

Seek for glory, &c.-A grand and noble distinction is here put between the pious and others, in all ages. The former may have been comparatively few, and in many instances have been contemned and persecuted among men; but what exaltation does real religion give to the human character! The earthly minded grovel amidst

the gross and fleeting pleasures and vain distinctions of a perishing life; but the pious seek glory, honour, and immortality, as they pass through the same scenes of life as others; their hearts are on higher objects; they hold communion with glorious hopes; and they seek these high realities of eternity through a course of holy obedience and preparation. Some think the three terms, glory, honour, and immortality, synonymous; but there is doubtless a distinction. The glory has respect to that now inaccessible light and splendour in which God dwells, and which constitutes the locality of the heavenly world; the honour, the favour of God, and the distinctions it may confer upon them; the immortality includes both the resurrection of the body with deathless qualities, and the unfading character of every enjoyment. The glory stands opposed to that distance from God's presence in which they now are; the honour, to their lowly and often calumniated condition; and the immortality, to death, from which good men are not yet freed. Now, upon all those who seek these things in preference to earthly ones, and in the way of righteous obedience to the divine will, eternal life, which includes them all, shall in that day be conferred. For it is to be observed, that, in the New Testament, the term eternal life does never barely signify perpetuity of being, but of that. felicitous existence which springs from admission into the presence of God, and from the fulfilment of all those promises relative to a future life which are made in the New Testament to the redeemed and saved.

Verse 8. But unto them that are contentious. Contention, epidea, being here mentioned in conjunction with not obeying the truth, the sense is manifest. The contentious here are not those who strive with one another, but those who oppose, resist, and fight against the truth of God, as revealed in different dispensations to

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ness.

Indignation and wrath.-Terrible words, when referred to God the Judge, and probably taken from Psalm lxxviii. 49, "He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, and indignation." Ovuos and opyn are words nearly of the same import, though the latter is thought, by some writers, to express a more permanent emotion. Taken together, the emphasis is heightened, and Suuos probably was intended to express the principle of divine wrath, and opy, its punitive manifestations. After indignation and wrath, it is necessary to understand shall be rendered, in order to complete the sense.

Verse 9. Tribulation and anguish, &c. -In this and the following verse, the same doctrine as to the exact distribution of rewards and punishments is repeated, but so as to exclude all possibility of evading the meaning. Tribulation and anguish, or distress, are words which seem to heighten the terribleness of the punishment the expression, every soul of man, is not idiomatic, but is used emphatically to show that there are no exceptions from the rule, as the wicked Jews vainly hoped in their own case; which is still more explicitly laid down by adding of the Jew first,-so far from being exempt from punishment because he is a Jew, he shall be first condemned and most

severely punished, as being first in the order of privilege. On the other hand, as to the pious Jews, who have improved their superior advantage, they shall be first in the rewards of another life. The same rule now holds good as to Christians and Gentiles; for we have taken the place of the Jewish church.

Verse 11. For there is no respect of persons with God.-The роσwоλnia, respect of persons, refers to judicial proceedings; and to one being favoured in preference to another, not because of the merit of his cause, but through the weakness or corruptness of the judge,-his weakness in being subject to blinding prejudices and partial affections, or his corrupt regard to the power or favour of the great, The doctrine of the Jews, that, though wicked, they should be exempt from punishment in another life, merely because they were the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, ascribed this, a weak prejudice and a blinding partial affection, to God, to the detriment of his righteous and equal character as "Judge of the whole earth." The great principle of the JUDICIAL IMPARTIALITY of God, the apostle here asserts, both as the conclusion of what he had already said, and as a principle which he proposed still further to illustrate.

Verse 12. For as many as have sinned without law.-Sinning avouws, without law, being here opposed to sinning ev vouw, in or under the law; by law, must be understood revealed law, or the law as contained in the Jewish scriptures. That

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the Gentiles were not without all knowledge of the law or will of God, he afterwards shows; so that he could not here mean to say, that they were absolutely without all law, but without that revealed law by which, he immediately adds, the Jews would be judged. Their perish ing without law also confirms this. The great scriptural principle is, that "where there is no law, there is no transgression;" and, if no transgression, no punishment for transgression. But the Gentiles are said to SIN; therefore, there existed among them a law; and a LAW made known, or knowable, or it could be no law to them; for a law not knowable is equivalent to a law not in existence; and they are said to PERISH in consequence of their sin, so that they were under a law having force and efficacy. It follows therefore, that by the law in this verse, the apostle means the law as it was made known to the Jews.

It has been remarked, that if the sense in which St. Paul uses the term LAW, in this epistle, were always explicitly marked, it would conduce much to the better understanding of his meaning. This is doubtless just; but we appear to have no other means of determining that but attending carefully to the argument. It has been attempted to clear this matter, by the help of the insertion or omission of the Greek article; and indeed this variation, which is sometimes seen in the same sentence, can scarcely have been without design; but no rule has hitherto been suggested which can be carried with satisfaction through all the passages which occur; and we are left to the conclusion that the use of the Greek article by the writers of the New Testament is still involved in great obscurity. The opinion that the word law, when used by St. Paul without the article, signifies the moral law, and when used with it includes the whole law moral and ceremonial, will by no means abide the test of the

different passages; and were we to allow that the apostle has any respect in his argument to the ceremonial law, the exceptions would break down the rule. But it appears in the sequel, that it is the moral law only from which the apostle argues, that law by which, as he says, is the know. ledge of sin," on the punishment, or forgiveness of which he mainly discourses.

It is more plausible to refer law without the article, to any kind of intimation of the divine will, whether by tradition or otherwise; and with the article, to the Jewish law, in whole or part. But this rule cannot be carried strictly through, though it holds good in part; and all that appears clear is, that the apostle often, but not uniformly, uses the article emphatically, and thus makes a distinction which otherwise would employ several words, between moral law in general, and that revelation of it with which the Jews were favoured. To the import of the leading term LAW, as it occurs in this epistle, our attention will be again more fully required.

Verse 13. For not the hearers of the law, &c.-Our translators place this, as well as the two following verses, in a parenthesis; but this tends to obscure the meaning. For that this verse stands in immediate connexion with the preceding, is evident from its containing the reason why those who have "sinned under the " Jewish "law," shall be "judged" or condemned by it, in opposition to the delusive notion which he is controverting, that the mere possession of superior external privileges by any, lays a ground of exemption from punishment, although their offences may in strictness deserve it. Such persons he denominates hearers of the law, that is, hearers only; those who have enjoyed the express revelation of the moral law or will of God, and yet have not obeyed And as those words are to be connected with the preceding verse, so the 16th verse follows them, leaving the 14th and

15th in a parenthesis. The whole passage will therefore read, For not the hearers of the law are just, are esteemed just persons, before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel. To be justified here signifies not to be forgiven, which is an act of grace done on earth, but stands in opposition to being condemned. Nor is it a declaration of innocence; for the whole evangelical system rests upon the actual guilt and danger of all who shall finally be saved, and the provision made for their pardon in the present life. Our justification at the last day can, therefore, only be considered as declaratory of what from its nature was before a secret between the justified and their God, and a public acceptance of them and dealing with them as righteous.

Verses 14, 15. For when the Gentiles, &c. -The true parenthesis includes only these verses; for that the connexion breaks off from the preceding verse, is clear from this, that the Gentiles could in no sense be said to be hearers of the law, the persons of whom the apostle had just spoken. The important passage thus parenthetically introduced, appears to have been designed to answer a tacit objection of this kind: -It may be true that not the mere hearers and only the doers of the law will be accepted of God at last; but how then shall Gentiles be saved at the last day, since they are not even hearers of the law? This question the apostle answers: To do by nature, quo, the things of the law, is to do what the revealed law prescribes, without the advantage of that express revelation of it which the Jews had: for amidst all the various illustrations of the phrase, "by nature," which critics have collected from classical and Hellenistic Greek writers, one has been generally overlooked, contained in this very epistle, chap. xi. 24, For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and

wert grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree," &c., where a cultivated and an uncultivated tree are made by the apostle the emblems of the pagan Gentiles and the Jews. That natural state of the Gentiles of which he speaks in the text stands equally opposed to the church state of the Jews, as in the passage just cited, and signifies the condition of all those nations to whom God had not made express and successive revelations of his will, and taken as his people under the cultivation of an appointed ministry and regular ordinances.

The things contained in the law.-More simply the things of the law, the things enjoined by the law, the worship, fear, and love of God; justice, charity, truth, and mercy; if not with so clear a knowledge of their distinctions, or so perfectly, as good men under the law, yet substantially and with entire sincerity.

These not having a law, &c.-Not having a WRITTEN law, (for so the argument obliges us to understand the apostle,) are not indeed without law, but are a law to themselves; that is, the law as written on their hearts is their law; and as they bear it about with them, and possess no external visible record of it, like the Jews in their tables of stone and sacred books, they are said to be a law to themselves.

Which show the work of the law written on their hearts.-The work is not that which is written on the heart; for that is said to be showed; it is therefore a visible thing, and consists in acts of noticeble conformity to the same moral rules as the Jews directly received from God. But that which is written on their hearts is the law; of the fact of the existence of which so written, the work spoken of is one of the proofs. In this phrase, the law written on the heart, and the law written on tables of stone and in the Jewish scriptures, are not indeed contrasted but distinguished; for the law is the same law, though under different modes of manifestation.