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, 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

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 insen sible. "Their conscience bore them "witness" that they violated many obvions 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

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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 shews the

* Romans, ch. ii.

equity

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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 substi tute 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 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.

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