A general View of the Qualities of Saint Paul — his Knowledge of Human Nature - his Deli- AN ESSAY ON THE CHARACTER AND PRACTICAL WRITINGS OF SAINT PAUL. CHAP. I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON THE MORALITY OF PAGANISM, SHOWING THE NECESSITY CHRISTIAN REVELATION. OF THE Ir cannot, we presume, be thought foreign to our purpose to introduce an Essay on the Character and Practical Writings of St. Paul, with a brief retrospect of the moral condition of the Gentile nations at that period when the great Apostle of the Gentiles first published Christianity among them. The morality of a people necessarily partakes of the nature of their theology; and in proportion as it is founded on the knowledge of the true God, in such proportion it tends to improve the conduct of man. The meanest Christian believer has here an advantage over the most enlightened heathen philosopher; for as what he knows of the nature of God arises chiefly from what he knows of Christ, and entirely from what is revealed in Scripture, he gains from those divine sources more clear and distinct views of the Deity than unassisted reason could ever attain; and of consequence, more correct ideas of what is required of himself, both with respect to God and man. His ideas may be mean in their expression, compared with the splendid language of the sages of antiquity; but the cause of the superiority of his conceptions is obvious. While they go about to establish their own wisdom, he submits to the wisdom of God, as he finds it in his word. What inadequate views must the wisest pagans, though "they felt after him," have entertained of Deity, who could at best only contemplate him in his attributes of power and beneficence, whilst their highest unassisted flights could never reach the remotest conception of that incomprehensible blessing, the union of his justice and mercy in the redemption of the world by his Son - a blessing familiar and intelligible to the most illiterate Christian. The religion of the heathens was so deplorably bad in its principle, that it is no wonder if their practice was proportionally corrupt. "Those just measures of right and wrong," |