dread and abhorrence of that, which has ruined him, and brought so much evil upon them all. In this way, however, it can be easily seen how a family may sink into a lower state of spiritual life than the parents, without incurring moral guiltiness thereby, if they have not been consciously concerned in the acts which led to it. And their children may sink lower still.

Thus we can conceive of the present state of the great body of the Jewish nation, as being in most cases the consequence, mainly, if not altogether, of the sins of their forefathers, without being in the least degree able to judge how much of the guilt of that state belongs to themselves, or how much of it belongs, rather, to us Christians, who have failed to let our light shine to the glory of our God before them. So too, in looking at a heathen people like the Zulus, we can conceive how they have sunk down gradually from that knowledge, which the fathers of all the Kafir tribes once possessed, as sons (very probably) or grandsons of Abraham, to the mere trace which they now have of that knowledge, in the recognition of one Supreme Creator,-whom they call uNkulunkulu, the Great-Great-One, or uMvelinqange, the first Out-Comer, but whom they will often confuse with the first created man,— without being in the least able to judge to what extent the living people of the tribe are involved in the guilt of such declension. It is enough for us to know that, whatever these brother-men may suffer, however they may be degraded and debased, whatever loss of moral or spiritual life they may experience through the sins of the generations which have gone before them, that measure of light which every one has had vouchsafed to him, will not be withdrawn or darkened, except through his own acts of conscious evil. Let it be repeated once more, there is now no condemnation but this for any member of the redeemed race of man, that 'light has come to him,' according to the measure of the gift of God; but he 'loved the darkness rather than the light, because his deeds were evil.'

44. v. 27. receiving back in themselves from God the just consequences of their evil doing, in the darkening of the mind, &c.

CHAP. I. 28-32.

(28) And, as they did not distinguish to hold God in their minds with intelligence, God gave them over unto a reprobate mind, to do things unseemly; (29) filled with all iniquity, fornication, knavery, greed, viciousness; crammed with envy, hatred, strife, deceit, spitefulness; whisperers, (30) backbiters, God-haters, insolent, haughty, braggarts, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, (31) senseless, perfidious, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful; (32) such as, knowing well the righteous decision of God, that those doing such things are worthy of death, not only do them, but even consent to those who do them.

NOTES.

45. v. 28. reprobate, that is, worthless, like drossy gold, rejected by the assayer, refuse. The play of words in the original Greek is lost in the English translation. It may be partially expressed by translating (with Dr Vaughan), As they refused to hold God intelligently, God gave them over to a refuse mind.'

46. v. 29. hatred. The Greek word means literally 'murder,' but appears to be used here in the sense of 'hatred.'

47. v. 30. inventors of evil things, that is, of new forms of evil, new vices, or vicious practices. Five of the terms here applied to the heathen world (and in substance several others) are found in 2 Tim. iii. 2, 3, in the predicted corruption of the Church itself.' Vaughan. It was, of course, part of the Apostle's stratagem, as it were, to include, among the grosser sins of the heathen, sins of a more ordinary kind, which were too often committed by Jews as well.

48. v. 32. knowing well the righteous decision of Godknowing it, of course, without revelation, in the secrets of their own hearts. The Apostle is not here speaking, we see, of infants, young children, insane persons, &c., who may do things evil without knowing that they are evil; nor, by analogy, is he speaking of others, who, though old in years, are as children in understanding, with regard to much that they do, and of whom there must be a multitude among the heathen. His argument does not require him to speak of these. He is here only speaking of those, who deliberately do what they know to be wrong, and justly incur a corresponding judgment.

49. v. 32. not only do them, but even consent to those who do them. The guilt incurred by those, who, knowing a thing to be wrong, not only do it, but encourage others to do it, or even look on complacently and consenting, while others do it, is double-dyed. A man may be overtaken by temptation, and sin in his own person, while actually condemning his own act, and loathing himself while he commits it. But to look on with any thing like pleasure or concurrence, while another is committing it, implies that he has deliberately taken part with evil.

CHAP. II. 1-10.

(1) Wherefore thou art without excuse, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest; for, whilst thou art judging the other, thou condemnest thyself; for thou, that art judging, doest the same things. (2) Now, we know that the judgment of God is according to truth upon those doing such things. (3) But dost thou calculate this, O man, thou that judgest those doing such things and doest them, that thou shalt wholly escape the judgment of God? (4) Or dost thou make light of the riches of His Goodness and Forbearance and Longsuffering, not perceiving that the Goodness of God is leading thee to repentance? (5) But after thy hard

ness and impenitent heart dost thou treasure for thyself wrath in the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God? (6)- who will give back to each according to his deeds; (7) to those, who with endurance in well-doing are seeking glory and honour and immortality, Life Eternal; (8) while for those of party-spirit, and disobedient to the truth, but yielding themselves up to iniquity, there is indignation and wrath; (9) tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that worketh out evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek; (10) but glory, and honour, and peace, to every one that worketh good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

NOTES.

49.

The Apostle, having v. 1. thou art without excuse. carried his Jewish reader along with him, while he brings under 'God's wrath'-not the heathen, bodily and universally, (he will speak of them afterwards) but those among them who, knowingly and wilfully practise the abominable things of which he had been speaking,—such as 'knew in themselves the judgment of God,' declared against such things, yet 'not only did them, but consented to those who did them,'-now turns sharply round upon the Jew himself, and asks, if he can possibly doubt that the same, or a heavier, judgment must light upon a vicious Jew-not, again, upon the Jews, bodily and universally, (he will speak of them also afterwards,) but upon such as practised the very sins, which they condemned in others, or other like sins. He wants, in fact, as has been said before, to introduce, as it were, 'the small end of the wedge,' and then afterwards he will strike it home, in the case of both Jew and Gentile. The idea was so new and strange to the Jewish mind of that day, that they were to be treated just like the Gentiles, or rather dealt with more severely, as their privileges had been so much greater, but treated by one and the

same righteous law, according to their lives, according to their deeds,'-not treated with special favouritism, sheltered and screened from wrath, because of their descent from Abraham, their knowledge of the law, their practice of circumcision,— that St Paul judiciously adopts this course, in order to set before the mind of his pious reader, whether a Jew or Roman proselyte, the startling result, to which his Jewish theory would carry him. That result would be no other than this, that an utterly vicious, though enlightened, Jew would be wholly exempted from feeling the weight of that wrath, which, as his own conscience told him, was declared from the God of Heaven against all wilful sin, and which he readily admitted to be deserved in the case of the vicious, but ignorant, Gentile. He wishes to make him stagger, as it were, at being brought face to face with such a conclusion as this, and to begin to question whether, after all, the great principle of Judaism was so irrefragably true. At all events, he will thus prepare him to listen more attentively to what he will now go on to say.

For it is certain that St Paul could not possibly mean that the pious people at Rome, to whom he was writing, were 'doing these same things,' while they condemned others. Whatever faults they were still committing daily, through the infirmity of the flesh, yet he would not surely think of speaking of them, as persons who habitually committed theft,' 'adultery,' or 'sacrilege,' through whom 'the Name of God was blasphemed among the heathen,' any more than, in the first chapter, he would have spoken of the great and good among the heathen, as 'being filled with all iniquity, fornication, uncleanness, &c.' All, that he wishes at this point to do, is to shake the fixed prejudice of his readers, as to the point of the Jew's immunity from judgment and wrath, only because he is a circumcised child of Abraham. If he can do this in the case of some, he can do it for all; he can bring them to confess that every Jew, even the most pious, must lie under sentence to God.' If he can bring them to feel that a wicked Jew must be subject to 'wrath' as well as other