own country, and before the same spectators, -never had Divine honours paid him. While, for a single cure, Paul and his companions were instantly deified, though they rejected the homage with a holy indignation. Nothing could more fully prove their deep humility than that they bore the abuse and ill-treatment of the people with meekness; but when they would have worshipped them, "they rent their clothes."

In fine, no principle short of the faith described by our apostle in the eleventh of Hebrews, could have enabled him to sustain, with such heroic firmness, the diversified sufferings alluded to in the twelfth of the second of Corinthians. Nothing short of that Divine support could have produced a disinterestedness so pure, a devotedness so sublime.

The afflictions of the saints serve to prove the distinguishing character of God's favour. The grace so eminently afforded to this apostle exempted him neither from sorrow nor suffering, nor dangers, nor calumny, nor poverty, nor a violent death. That its results were in the opposite direction, shows at once the intrinsic nature of the Divine favour, and the spirit in which it is received and acted upon by sincere Christians.

99

CHAP. VII.

SAINT PAUL'S PRUDENCE IN HIS CONDUCT TOWARDS THE JEWS.

THE judgment of Saint Paul is remarkably manifest in the juxta-position of things. In opening his Epistle to his converts at Rome, among whom were many Jews for whose benefit he wrote, he paints the moral character of that Pagan capital in the darkest colours. The fidelity of his gloomy picture is corroborated by an almost contemporary historian*, who, though a Pagan and a countryman, paints it in still blacker shades, and without the decorum observed by Saint Paul.

The representation here made of Roman vice would be in itself sufficiently pleasing to the Jew; and it would be more so, when we observe, what is most worthy of observation, the nature of the charges brought against the Romans. As if the wisdom of God had been desirous of vindicating itself by the lips of Paul in the eyes of his own countrymen the Jews, the vices charged upon the Romans are exactly those which stand in opposition to the spirit of some one injunction of the Decalogue. Now,

* Suetonius.

though the heathen writers were unacquainted with this code, yet the spontaneous breach of its statutes proved most clearly these statutes to have been suggested by the most correct foreknowledge of the evil propensities of our common nature. The universal violation of the law, even by those who knew it not, manifested the omniscience of the Lawgiver.

And, let it be further remarked in this connection, that no exceptions could be taken against the justice of God, for animadverting on the breach of a law which was not known; inasmuch as, so faithful was the law of Mount Sinai to the law of conscience, the revealed to the natural code of morals, that the Romans in offending one had offended both; in breaking unwittingly the Decalogue, they had knowingly rebelled against the law of conscience; they had sinned against the light of nature; they had stifled the suggestions of their better judgment; they had consciously abused natural mercies; they had confounded the distinctions of good and evil, of which they were not insensible. "Their conscience bore them witness 99 that they violated many obvious duties, so that "even these were without excuse."

The unconverted Jews would doubtless, then, feel no small pleasure in contemplating this hideous portrait of human crimes as without excuse, and would naturally be tempted, with their usual self-complacency, to turn it to their

own advantage, and boastfully to thank God that they were not like other men, or even like these Romans.

*

To check this unbecoming exultation, the Apostle, with admirable dexterity, in the very next chapter begins to pull down their high conceits. He presents them with a frightful picture of themselves, drawn from the life, and aggravated by a display of that superior light and knowledge which rendered their immoralities far more inexcusable. To the catalogue of the vices which he had reprehended in the others, he adds that of self-sufficiency, arrogance, and harsh judgment, which formed so disgusting a feature in the Pharisaic character. Paul in this point shows the equity of distributive justice. The Jews had sinned, not only against the law they knew, but the law they venerated. They rested in the law, not with gratitude for the distinction, but with security in the privilege; and they were ruined, he suggests, by a vain confidence in those external advantages which would have been their glory, had not privileges been converted into a substitute for piety. What apology should he now offer for the sins of the chosen nation, the peculiar people, the possessors and the boasters of the law, distinguished, not only by having received, but by being the hereditary, exclusive proprietors

Romans, ii.

of the Divine Oracles? Thus, while he convicts his own nation, he gives an awful lesson to posterity of the vanity of forms and profession; that it is not possessing, nor dispersing, the Bible that will carry men to heaven, but only as they individually believe its doctrines, submit to its authority, and conform to its precepts. The Apostle reminds them, that it is not the knowledge of God's will, which they possessed; nor the approbation of "things that are excellent," which they manifested; nor their confident ambition of teaching others; nor their skill to guide the blind; nor the form of knowledge; nor the letter of the law, which could avail without personal holiness.

After this severe reproof, for doing themselves the wrong things they censured, and for not doing the right things they taught, he suddenly turns upon them with a rapid succession of interrogatories respecting their own practice; personally applying each distinct subject of their instruction of others, to each distinct failure of their own, in those very points of conduct on which they insisted; proving upon them, that through this glaring inconsistency, "the name of God was blasphemed among unbelievers."

Thus he demonstrates that the Jew and the Gentile stand on the same level with regard to their definitive sentence, each being to be judged according to their respective law. Nay, the