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LECTURE X.

ROMANS iii, 9—19.

"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 as it is written, There is none righteous, no not one there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre: with their tongues they have used deceit: the poison of asps is under their lips: whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace have they not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know, that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God."

V. 9. BETTER,' in respect of having a righteousness before God. We have before charged Jews and Gentiles with being under sin. We affirmed it to their own conscience. We now prove it to the Jews from their own revelation. The following is the paraphrase of this passage.

'What then! are we Jews better than those Gentiles in respect of our justification by our own obedience? Not at all-for we before charged both Jews and Gentiles with being under sin. And we prove it from God's written revelation, where it is affirmed, that there are none who have a righteousness that He will accept-not even one.

There are none who are thus satisfied with themselves, and feel no need of such a justification as we propose, that really understandeth, or truly seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way and have become unprofitable, and there is none of them that doeth what is substantially and religiously good-no, not one. From their mouths there proceedeth every abomination; and they speak deceitfully with their tongues; and the poison of malignity distils from their lips; and their mouth is full of imprecation upon others, and of bitterness against them. And they not only speak mischief, but they do it; for they eagerly run to the shedding of blood; and their way may be tracked, as it were, by the destruction and the wretchedness which mark the progress of it; and they know not and love not the way of peace; and, as to the fear of God, He is not looked to or regarded by them. Now all this is charged upon men by the book of the Jewish law. We are only repeating quotations out of their own Scriptures; and as what the law saith is intended for those who are under the law, and not for those who are strangers to it and beyond the reach of its announcements-all these sayings must be applied to Jews; and they prove that it is not the mere possession of a law, but the keeping of it which secures the justification of those over whom it has authority. Their mouths, therefore, must also be stopped; and the whole world, consisting of Jews and Gentiles, must all be brought in as guilty before God.'

We here remark, in the first place, that Paul had already, in the second chapter, affirmed the guilt of the Jews, and condescended upon the instances of it. He can scarcely be said to have proved their guilt; he had only charged them with it; and yet through the conscience of those whom we address, it is very possible that a charge may no sooner be uttered, than a conviction on the part of those against whom we are directing the charge, may come immediately on the back of it. There is often a power in a bare statement, which is not at all bettered but rather impaired by the accompaniment of reasoning. If what you say of a man agree with his own bosom experience that it is really so, there is a weight in your simple affirmation which needs not the enforcing of any argument. It is this which gives such authority to those sermons even still, that recommend themselves to the conscience; and it was this, in fact, which gained more credit and acceptance for the apostles than did all their miracles. They revealed to men the secrets of their own hearts; and what the inspired teacher said they were, they felt themselves to be; and nothing brings so ready and entire an homage to the truth that is spoken, as the agreement of its simple assertions with the finding of a man's own conscience. This manifestation of the truth unto the conscience, which was the grand instrument of discipleship in the first ages of the church, is the grand instrument still; and it is thus that an unlearned hearer,

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who just knows his own mind, may be touched as effectually to his conviction, by the accordancy between what a preacher says, and what he himself feels, as the most profound and philosophical member of an accomplished congregation. And thus that obstinacy of unbelief, which we vainly attempt to carry by the power of any elaborate or metaphysical demonstration, may give way, both with the untaught and the cultivated, to the bare statement of the preacher-when he simply avers the selfishness of the human heart; and its pride, and its sensuality, and above all its ungodli

ness.

But Paul is not satisfied with this alone. He refers the Jews to their own Scriptures. He deals out quotations chiefly taken from the book of Psalms; and, in so doing, he avails himself of what both he and the other apostles felt to be a peculiarly fit and proper instrument of conviction, in their various reasonings with the children of Israel. You meet with this style of argumentation on many distinct occasions, and often ushered in with the phrase 'as it is written.' It was thus that Christ expounded to his disciples what was written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning Him; and that these disciples again went forth upon the Jews, armed for their intellectual warfare out of the Old Testament. In almost every interview they had with the Hebrews, you will meet with this as a peculiarity which is not to be observed, when epistles

are addressed, or conversations are held, with Gentiles only. Thus Stephen gave a long demonstration to his persecutors out of the Jewish history; and Peter rested his argument for Jesus Christ, on the interpretation that he gave of one of the prophetic psalms; and Paul, in his sermon at Antioch, went back to the story of Egyptian bondage and carried his explanation downwards through David and his family, to the doctrine of the remission of sins by the Saviour, who sprang from him; and, in the Jewish synagogue at Thessalonica, did he reason with them three sabbath days out of the Scriptures; and before the judgment-seat of Felix, did he aver, that his belief in Jesus of Nazareth, was that of one who believed all the things that are written in the law and in the prophets; and in argumenting the cause of Christianity before Agrippa, did he rest his vindication on what Agrippa knew of the promises that were found in the Old Testament; and when he met his countrymen at Rome, it was his employment, from morning to evening, to persuade them concerning Jesus both out of the law of Moses and out of the prophets. He who was all things to all men, was a Jew among the Jews. He reasoned with them on their own principles, and no where more frequently than in this Epistle to the Romans-where, though he had previously spoken of their sinfulness to their own conscience, he yet adds a number of deponing testimonies to the same effect from their own book of revelation.