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LECTURE IX.

ROMANS iii, 1-9.

"What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged. But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man,) God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world? For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner? and not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come-whose damnation is just? What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin."

You will recollect that by the argument of the foregoing chapter, our apostle, after having demonstrated the universality of Gentile guilt in the sight of God, attempts the same demonstration in reference to the Jews. He proves, that, with the possession of all that which distinguished them outwardly from other nations, they might fully participate in that condemnation to which sin has rendered us all liable; and even affirms as much as may lead us to understand, that the

privileges which belonged to them, when neglected and abused, were in fact so many circumstances of aggravation. It was very natural, that, at this point of his argument, he should conceive an objection that might arise against it; and, speaking in the person of an adversary, he proposes this objection in the form of a question from him. This question he answers in his own name. And the remonstrance of his imaginary opponent, together with his own reply to it, occupy the first and second verses of the chapter upon which we have entered. Look upon these two verses as the first step and commencement of a dialogue, that is prosecuted onwards to the 9th verse; and you have, in what we have now read, a kind of dramatic interchange of argument, going on between Paul and a hostile reasoner, whom he himself, by an act of imagination, has brought before him. This is a style of argumentation that is quite familiar in controversy. The preacher will sometimes deal with an objection, just in the very terms he would have done, if it were cast in living conversation against him, by one standing before his pulpit; and the writer, when he anticipates a resistance of the same kind to his reasoning will just step forward to encounter it, as he would have done, if an entrance were actually made against him on the lists of authorship. This is the way in which the apostle appears to be engaged in the verses before us; and if you conceive them made up of objections put by an antagonist, and

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replies to those questions by himself, it will help to clear your understanding of the passage now under our consideration.

You have already heard at length all the elucidation which we mean to offer, on the first question and part of the first answer of this dialogue. After the Jew had been so much assimilated in guilt to the Gentile, as he had been by the apostle in the last chapter, the objection suggests itself, Where then is the advantage of having been a Jew? Where is the mighty blessedness which was spoken of by God to the patriarchs, as that which was to signalize their race above all the other descendants of all other families? The reply given to this in the second verse is, that the chief advantage lay in their having committed to them the oracles of God. You will recollect the inference that we drew from this answer of the apostle's-even, that though the Scriptures laid a heavier responsibility upon those who had them, than upon those who had them not; and though, in virtue of this, the many among the ancient Hebrews were rendered more criminal than they else would have been, and were therefore sunk on that account more deeply into an abyss of condemnation; and though they were only the few who by faith in these Scriptures attained to the heights of celestial blessedness and glory-yet there must have been a clear preponderance of the good that was rendered over the evil that was incurred, seeing it to be affirmed by the inspired author of this argument that there was a clear advantage

upon the whole. We will not repeat the applications which we have already made of this apostolic statement, to the object of vindicating a missionary enterprise, by sending the light and education of Christianity abroad-or of vindicating the efforts of diffusing more extensively than heretofore the same education at home. But be assured, that it were just as wrong to abstain from doing this which is in itself good, lest evil should come-as it were to do that which is in itself evil, that good may come. Nor, however powerfully they may have operated in retarding the best of causes, is there any thing in the objections to which we there adverted, that ought to keep back our direct and immediate entrance upon the bidden field of "Go and teach all nations"-"Go and preach the gospel to every creature under heaven."

The apostle we conceive to be still speaking in his own person, throughout the third and fourth verses. It is to be remarked that 'some' in the original signifies a part of the whole, but not necessarily a small part of it. It may be a very great part and majority of the whole-as in that passage of the book of Hebrews, where it is said 'some when they heard provoked-howbeit not all that came out of Egypt with Moses.' The truth is, that, as far as we historically know of it, all did provoke God upon that occasion, save Joshua and Caleb, and those younger of the people who were still incapable of bearing arms. And in Timothy we read that some shall depart from the faith'

though the apostle is there speaking of that overwhelming apostacy of the middle ages, which left so faint and feeble a remainder of light to Christendom for many centuries. And, in like manner, were they the greater number of the Jews, who were only so in the letter, and in the outward circumcision; and were not so in spirit, or in the circumcision of the heart. They were greatly the more considerable part who did not believe; and yet, in the face of this heavy deduction from the good actually rendered to the Jews, could the apostle still stand up in the vindication of those promises which God held forth to their ancestors; of a blessing upon those who should come after them-letting us know, that, though they were the many who aggravated their own condemnation, and the few who by inheriting the privileges inherited a blessing, yet the truth of God here called the faith of God, was not unfulfilled-that whatever comes in the shape of promise or of prophecy from Him, will have its verification-that whatever be the deceitfulness of man, God will still retain the attribute given to Him by the apostle elsewhere, even that He cannot lie. So that, should it be questioned whether the family of Israel, in consequence of God's dealing with them, had an advantage over all the other families, it will be found in the holy and faithful men of the old dispensation, few as they were; and it will be found on the great day of manifestation, when all the reverses of Jewish history from the first calling forth of Abraham