Of the existence of this law, delineated upon the hearts of the Gentiles, two proofs are adduced: 1. The existence of conscience among them. This cannot be denied; the power of it is often adverted to by their writers, and expressed with great force; but conscience necessarily supposes both a knowledge of the fact to which it is to bear witness, and of the rule by which its moral quality is to be determined, and of the authority of that rule as divine, or there could be no painful apprehension of punishment. The second proof is, that not only did conscience give its condemning or approving witness in the bosom of each individual, but that in their reasonings and disputes they either accused or excused, condemned or acquitted, each other with reference to different acts or courses of action. This also could not be denied; for moral approbation or moral censure was continually called forth in their intercourse with each other; and amidst all the perversions of men's minds, on moral subjects, in the Gentile world, yet do we see certain crimes condemned there, as well as among the Jews; and certain virtues recognised and applauded. "The words μelağv aλλnλwv,” says Bloomfield," should not be rendered meanwhile," &c., nor, with Macknight," between one another; but, with the Vulgate, inter se invicem." But this is the same thing as the conscience bearing witness; the argument would indeed be the same, though somewhat less cogent; but it seems preferable to take με αξυ αλληλων των λογισμων in the sense of their reasonings or debates with one another, either on the subject of good or evil, or as estimating each other's character, or dealing out their censures or their praises. The whole proved that they had moral knowledge; consequently that they were morally responsible, and capable of rewards or punishments at the last day; which is what the apostle intended to show in illustration of the rectitude of the proceedings of the general judgment.

From this passage of St. Paul respecting the Gentiles, many erroneous conclusions have been drawn. Here it has been pretended we see the foundation of

natural religion, and the sufficiency of unassisted reason to discover the existence of God, and to arrive at the knowledge of his will; "therefore there is a law of nature, which is a true guide." This and many other things of the same kind have been said, without adverting to the fact, that the moral law of God is older than its revelation to the Jews, and more extensive than the boundaries of one people; that Noah, THE PREACHER OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, and an INSPIRED man, was the teacher of this law to his sons; that it descended to all the families which sprung from him, that is, to all the families of the earth; that indirectly, though not directly, the revelations to the Jews glanced their beams upon all the surrounding nations, the greatest and most populous states of antiquity; and that consequently none of the people of whom St. Paul more particularly speaks had ever been left to their own reason to discover God, or the leading rules of moral law. He speaks not indeed of a law devised and invented by the hearts of the Gentiles, but a law, the same in substance as that revealed to the Jews, written upon their hearts, delineated and infixed there by some external impression. Such was the TRADITION of their fathers; which, though gradually perverted, was handed down, and made, in fact, such an appeal to the sense and perception of right, which every man has by his very mental constitution, as to become, and in many respects to remain, an AUTHORITATIVE rule of CONSCIENCE. For that the heathens connected it with a superior authority to that of man, is evident from Cicero,

By what law? By what right? By that which Jupiter himself has established, that every thing salutary to the public should have the character of lawful and just. For the law is nothing else but that right reason which we have derived from a divine counsel and will, commanding things honest and praiseworthy, and prohibiting the contrary." Still this law, in its best manifestations, was capable of being corrupted by the will, and was actually so. The unbiassed convictions of man must be in favour of what is right

Still it may be asked, how this doctrine of the possible salvation of the Gentiles, in a course of "well doing," comports with his main design to show that both Jews and Gentiles were under wrath, and needed that gospel which he gloried to preach as the power of God unto salvation? Let it be remarked in answer, that although he states the possibility, his general representation of the actual condition of the Gentiles shows that, in point of fact, he thought the number of pious Gentiles to be exceeding few. He adinits, of course, that the Jew might be saved, but dwells upon the corrupt state of his own nation every where, as a proof how much they needed the gospel; both required the administration of the remedy in its most efficient form, in order to save those who would not be saved without it, although the possibility of salvation remained to both. Besides, St. Paul did not attribute the salvation of a pious Gentile, any more than of a pious Jew, to a constitution of moral government at all different from that of the gospel; so that it could be said, as some have dreamed, here is one man saved by the law of nature, another by the law of Moses, a third by the gospel. When we speak now of sin and punishment, we refer to the moral law as contained in the gospel; and so when we speak of good works and holiness, their root; for that moral law is the rule of both. But it does not follow from this that we separate that law from

Or, between themselves.

that gracious constitution of free and unmerited mercy in Christ under which we are all by the kindness of God our Saviour placed. We may, indeed, make the separation of the preceptive part from the evangelical part, as did the Jews, as to their own law; but in the kind of moral government under which man has been placed, ever since he was placed in the hands of a Mediator, they have been united. With the law of Moses there was, therefore, in all ages, an evangelical grace united; and so with the law written on the heart. It was taught and handed down by the patriarchs in connexion with the doctrine of typical sacrifices, and the means of propitiation for sin, and obtaining the favour and help of God; whilst independent of the degree of distinct knowledge which the Gentiles might have, they were the subjects of Christ's redemption, and were never treated on the ground of rigid law. This doctrine of the participation of all men in the benefits of the obedience of Christ, as all had participated in the effects of the disobedience of Adam, he expressly dwells upon in chapter v. By whatever means, therefore, any Gentiles had been rescued from vice, and brought to do the things enjoined by the law, they all emanated from, and were rendered efficient by, that scheme of redemption which had been laid from the beginning as the basis of God's moral government of a fallen world. Had Jews and Gentiles preserved even that clear knowledge of this which they all originally possessed, they would have been bound to receive the gospel in its perfected form; for that had been, in type and promise, the only ground of their hope from the beginning, and now presented to them the great substance. How much more was it necessary to their

salvation now that their original light, both as to law and grace, had become so deeply darkened; and a special interposition of revelation and supernatural influence upon the hearts, sunk into the very death of sin, was necessary to save the world.

Verses 17-20. Behold, thou art called a Jew, &c. In the following verses the apostle pursues the same argument, which is not merely to prove that the Jews were sinners as well as the Gentiles, but that they, as well as 'the sinners of the Gentiles," were liable to punishment, and that in a future life, contrary to their own received doctrine, "that every Israelite has a portion in the life to come.” Nay, still as his course of observation in the subsequent part of this chapter shows, their religious distinction as God's peculiar people, so far from exempting them from punishment, only served to heighten their guilt, and aggravate their condemnation.

Restest in the law. &c.-Thou leanest upon and trustest in the law, that is, in the great privilege of having had express revelations of the will of God from himself. And makest thy boast of God, as thy God, the glorious object of thy worship, and as, in a special sense, "the Lord God of Israel." And knowest his will, that having been explicitly stated by revelation on all moral duties, as well as matters of faith and worship; and approvest the things that are more excellent, triest the things that differ in their moral qualities, in order to the discovery and approval of what is excellent; being instructed for this purpose out of the law, or by the law, as the great and infallible rule and standard; a high privilege which the wisest among the Gentiles had not, who leaned to their

own wisdom. And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind. Here, and in what follows, the apostle has been supposed to glance at the titles assumed by the Jewish doctors. This title, guides of the blind, our Lord turns against them with great severity by calling them "blind guides." A light of them which are in darkness : so they complimented each other, one as "the lamp of light," another as "the holy lamp," a third as "the lamp of Israel." An instructer of the foolish, the very title, says Rosenmuller, which Maimonides gives to one of his treatises, 2) MD, a teacher of babes, another title for a public instructer. But though these were titles of their doctors, St. Paul is not speaking of them in particular, but of the Jews in general; and with reference to his ability to teach a Gentile, every Jew, though but in the ordinary degree instructed in the law, might be called, without exaggeration, a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, &c. This office, too, some of them well fulfilled; for many Greeks in the cities where the Jews were settled had been brought to the knowledge of the true God, and are mentioned several times in the Acts of the Apostles as proselytes. Which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law; the delineation, μopowσis, in the mind or judgment of what is contained in the law. This does not mean, as some have understood, a shadowy unsubstantial appearance of divine truth; but a real and accurate scheme of it in the mind, which was no doubt true as to those moral subjects to which St. Paul principally refers. He grants indeed all this, in order to fix in their minds a deeper sense of the enormity of their offences.