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Julian Period, 4771.

ROM. i. 1-7.

Vulgar Era, St. Paul affirms his apostolic Power, and shewing the human Nature of Christ by his Descent from David, and

58.

the provinces of Judea, the thought does not seem to have
occurred to him, that the Gospel was to be preached out of
Judea to the Gentile nations. For these reasons I think we are
justified in concluding that though he might have taken refuge
in Rome, he did not preach there to the people, nor establish a
Church. There certainly appears to be sufficient reason to be-
lieve that he went to Rome, but there is no proof whatever that
he had at this time, at least, attempted to plant a Church. If
he had done so, he would doubtless have imparted the gifts
of the Holy Spirit, as he had already done when he went down to
confirm the Samaritans, after the preaching of Philip; but St.
Paul tells the Romans, that he longed to see them, that he
might impart unto them some spiritual gift. That St. Peter had
not planted the Church of Rome, is implied also in Rom. xv. 11,
that St. Paul wished to confine his ministry to those places
which had not been visited by other apostles. He wished, how-
ever, to see Rome, and we may conclude therefore that St. Peter
had not established the Church in that city.

The design of this much controverted Epistle is fully laid
down in the 16th verse of the first chapter, in which the apostle
affirms the perfect efficacy of the Gospel to salvation, both to the
Jew and Gentile. At the time the Epistle was written the great
controversy of the Church originated from an erroneous inter-
pretation of the promise of God made to Abraham. The Jews
supposed obedience to the moral law of Moses, with the atone-
ment and purifications of their ceremonial law, were a sufficient
atonement and justification; and, as the chosen seed of Abra-
ham, they considered themselves alone entitled to be heirs of
the promises of God, and the benefits of the kingdom of the
Messiah. These exclusive claims rendered them unwilling to
receive the Gospel which maintained the inefficacy of their own
law-admitted the Gentiles to the same privileges with them-
selves and declared that faith in the promises of God without
circumcision was the condition of salvation. The object of the
apostle throughout the Epistle is evidently to confute these
deep-rooted prejudices, and to convince the Jews that the Gos-
pel of Christ, and not the law of Moses, was the appointed means
of salvation. These contests between the Jews and Christians
were carried to such a height at Rome, that the contending
parties were banished in the eleventh year of Claudius from the
city. (Acts xviii. 2.) Among these were Aquila and Priscilla,
who coming to Corinth about the time that St. Paul first visited
that place, and being of the same occupation with him, they re-
ceived him into their house. There is reason to suppose, there-
fore, that they made St. Paul acquainted with the disordered
state of the Church at Rome, and that he addressed this Epistle
to the Romans as soon as the Church was again re-established
in that city, during his second visit to Corinth.

The Christians at Rome were divided into three classes. The native Jews who resided there, and in all probability first preached the Gospel to their countrymen, the proselytes to the Jewish religion, and the idolatrous Gentiles, who had been converted to the faith of Christianity.

The unbelieving Romans, who were great admirers of the philosophy of the Greeks, considered the light of nature as a sufficient guide in all matters of religion. Many converted Jews joined the unbelieving Jews in affirming that the law of Moses

Corinth.

Julian Period, 4771. Vulgar Æra,

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his Divine Nature by the Resurrection, he declares that Corinth. he received his Mission from Christ to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, of whom the Church of Rome principally was more efficacious than the Gospel of Christ; while the Gentile converts rejoicing in their freedom from the bondage of the law, regarded their Jewish brethren as superstitious and bigotted and to these various parties the Epistle seems to be addressed, as well as to the Church itself to the Jew first, and then the Gentile.

Dr. Paley, with his usual perspicuity, has shewn that the principal object of the argumentative part of the Epistle, is "to place the Gentile convert upon a parity of situation with the Jewish, in respect of his religious condition, and his rank in the Divine favour." The Epistle supports this point by a variety of arguments, such as that no man of either description was justified by the works of the law, for this plain reason, that no man had performed them; that it became therefore necessary to appoint another medium, or condition of justification, in which new medium the Jewish peculiarity was merged and lost; that Abraham's own justification was antecedent to the law, and independent of it; that the Jewish converts were to consider the law as now dead, and themselves as married to another; that what the law in truth could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God had done by sending his Son; that God had rejected the unbelieving Jews, and had substituted in their place a society of believers in Christ, collected indifferently from Jews and Gentiles. Therefore, in an Epistle directed to Roman believers, the point to be endeavoured after by St. Paul, was to reconcile the Jewish converts to the opinion that the Gentiles were admitted by God to a parity of religious situation with themselves; and that, without their being obliged to keep the law of Moses in this Epistle, though directed to the Roman Church in general, it is in truth a Jew writing to Jews. Accordingly, as often as his argument leads him to say any thing derogatory from the Jewish institution, he constantly follows it by a softening clause. Having (chap. ii. 28, 29.) pronounced, "that he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor that circumcision which is outward in the flesh," he adds immediately, "What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there in circumcision? Much every way." Having in the third chapter, verse 28. brought his argument to this formal conclusion, “that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the law," he presently subjoins, verse 31." Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid! Yea, we establish the law."

In the seventh chapter, when, in verse 6, he had advanced the bold assertion, "that now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held," in the next verse he comes in with this healing question, "What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid! Nay, I had not known sin but by the law." Having in the following words more than insinuated the inefficacy of the Jewish law, chap. viii. 3. "for what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh,God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the flesh," after a digression indeed, but that sort of a digression which he could never resist, a rapturous contemplation of his Christian hope, and which occupies the latter part of this chapter: we find in the next, as if sensible that he had said something that would give offence, returning to his Jewish brethren in terms of the warmest affection and respect; "I say the truth in Christ Jesus, I lie not; my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heavi

Julian Period, 4771. Vulgar Æra, 58.

consisted, and he has therefore Authority to address Corinth. them.

1 Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apos-
tle, separated unto the gospel of God,

ness and continual sorrow in my heart; for I could wish that
myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen
according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertaineth
the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving
of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose
are the Fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ
came." When in the thirty-first and thirty-second verses of the
ninth chapter, he represented to the Jews the error of even the
best of their nation, by telling them that "Israel, which followed
after the law of righteousness, had not attained to the law of
righteousness, because they sought it not by faith, but as it wore
by the works of the law, for they stumbled at that stumbling
stone;" he takes care to annex to this declaration these con-
ciliating expressions: "Brethren, my heart's desire, and prayer
to God for Israel is, that they might be saved; for I bear them
record, that they have a zeal for God, but not according to
knowledge." Lastly, having, chap. x. 20, 21. by the applica-
tion of a passage in Isaiah, insinuated the most ungrateful of
all propositions to a Jewish ear, the rejection of the Jewish
nation, as God's peculiar people, he hastens, as it were, to
qualify the intelligence of their fall by this interesting exposi-
tion: "I say, then, hath God cast away his people, (i. e. wholly
and entirely?) God forbid! for I also am an İsraelite, of the
seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin, God hath not cast
away his people which he foreknew;" and follows this thought
throughout the whole of the eleventh chapter, in a series of re-
flections calculated to soothe the Jewish converts, as well as to
procure from their Gentile brethren respect to the Jewish in-
stitutions.

We must be careful not to confine our views of St. Paul's ar-
gument in this epistle to the narrow limits within which Taylor
of Norwich, the Socinian writers in general, and the pre-
sumptuous reasoners of this school have endeavoured to do.
These men have rejected the very foundations of the apostle's
argument, the doctrines upon which Christianity rests, and
without which the Scriptures are devoid of meaning, the doc-
trines of the atonement of Christ and the fall of man. Semler,
indeed, still further degrades the apostle's argument, by the
supposition that St. Paul wished to substitute Christianity
merely as a purer and more intelligible system of morals than the
law of Moses, but less burthensome, tedious, and unattractive.

Dr. Taylor's system is well described by the present Archbishop of Dublin to be a mere adaptation of Scripture phrases. The general principle of his theory is, that God having rejected the Jews, has admitted all who believe in Christ into the same relation to himself which the Israelites once held: and the peculiar terms which he used to describe the condition and privileges of the Jews, were used in the New Testament to describe the state and privileges of the Christian converts: whereas the terms which are used in the Old Testament to describe the privileges of the Jews, are to be interpreted with reference to their peculiar situation as the subjects of the visible theocracy. The same terms, when used in the Gospel, refer to the spiritual advautages conferred on Christians by the new covenant. The law was the shadow, or emblem; the Gospel is the accomplishment of the designs of God: and the same terms, when applied to the Bb

VOL. II.

Julian Pe

2 (Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the Corinth. riod, 4771. holy scriptures,) Vulgar Æra,

58.

3 Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;

4 And declared to be the Son of God with power, ac-
cording to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from
the dead:

5 By whom we have received grace and apostleship for
obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name:
6 Among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ:
7 To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be
saints: Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father,
and the Lord Jesus Christ.

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St. Paul rejoices at their Faith-expresses his great desire
to visit them, that he might establish them by the impart-
two covenants, will consequently have a different meaning. Dr.
Taylor degrades the Christian, and elevates the Jewish scheme,
by making, as an excellent critic has observed, the law the en-
during dispensation, and the Gospel a mere dependency upon it.
In an excellent work by Mr. Mendham, entitled Clavis Apos-
tolica, the argument of Dr. Taylor is well analized and refuted.
I have not room here to enter into a large variety of curious
and difficult matter, arising from the comments of various
learned writers on this epistle. The opinions of Bishop Bull on
the defect of grace to the Jew under the Mosaic dispensation-
the precise ideas which the Jews formed of the effects of their
law in procuring or assisting their justification-and many
others, require examination; and their more ample discussion
would well repay the labour of the theological student. With
respect to the analysis of this epistle, which is now submit-
ted to the reader, I may be permitted to say that it is the
result of an anxious examination of the labours of my learn-
ed and respected tutor, Mr. Young, Doddridge, Scarlet, Dr.
Taylor, and his followers, Mr. Belsham, Mr. Scott, and
Whitby, and to the works of these writers, as well as to the
Quarterly Review of Mr. Belsham on the Epistles, No. 59, I must
refer the reader. The commentators, and the various writers
on this epistle, have exhausted the language of eulogy on its
structure, argument, and language. Nothing need be added to
these well deserved praises. The epistle is indeed a master-
piece of beautiful reasoning, surpassing all human wisdom-it
evidently bears the stamp of divine inspiration-it enforces, in
an irresistible manner, all the fundamental doctrines of Chris-
tianity, gradually unfolding, from the fall of our first parents,
the great mysteries of redemption, and fully displaying the wis-
dom and goodness of God in his dispensations towards man.
Every argument that the ingenuity of man could devise against
the Gospel system, the apostle himself advances in the person of
the unbelieving Jew, and answers in the most satisfactory and
convincing manner.-Guided by divine inspiration, he has hap-
pily anticipated and removed every doubt and difficulty that
can be raised to the truths of Revelation-he has communicated
to man the hidden counsels of God-and, by a long and con-
vincing train of argument, has fully demonstrated that the Gos-
pel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation, and that there
is no other means under heaven by which men can be saved.

Julian Period, 4771. Vulgar Era,

58.

ing of some spiritual Gift, by which proof he and they Corinth.
would be mutually strengthened and comforted in the
Faith of Christ-St. Paul, appointed to preach the Gos-
pel to all Nations, still desires to preach it to the Romans,
because first, he affirms it to be the Power of God unto
Salvation to the Jew, and also to the Gentile-Secondly,
that in the Gospel alone is revealed the Righteousness of
God; and the only condition of Justification and Accept-
ance with him, which is by Faith, and not by Works-
Thirdly, on account of the superiority of the Gospel Dis-
pensation to the Law of Moses, or the light or law of
Conscience, both of which condemn to Death, without any
condition, all those who have sinned.

8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you
all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole
world.

9 For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers;

10 Making request, if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God, to come unto you.

11 For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established:

12 That is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.

13 Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, (but was let hitherto,) that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles.

14 I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians; both to the wise and to the unwise.

15 So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also.

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.

§ 3. ROM. i. 19, to the end.

St. Paul shews that the Gentiles had a sufficient evidence
of God and of his glorious Perfections in the Works of
Creation-To demonstrate that no Man by the Law of
Nature could obtain Salvation, he enumerates the Vices
of the Greeks, who had attained to the highest degree of

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