Iv.] IN WHAT CONDITION WHEN S. PAUL WROTE.

107

already determined on. His Epistle came first into the hands of this party of his friends, and the salutations at the close appear to be nearly confined to them, and the Church in their house;' as if the Rom. xvi. 5. reorganization of Christians on their return to the city had its nucleus with these associates of S. Paul. This is not out of harmony with the common tradition which links the two Apostles, S. Peter and S. Paul, as joint founders of the Roman Christianity. When, three years or more after writing his State of Epistle, S. Paul arrived in Rome, very little public s. Paul's progress seems to have been made, and the Chris- arrival. tians must have kept themselves much apart from

This may have been from poli

things on

15, 21.

the synagogue. tical motives, and fears of another expulsion; but whatever were the cause, the half-informed tone of the synagogue when S. Paul first came, and the Acts xxviii. retired manner of the brethren who met him at Appii Forum, show how much the Gospel had suffered by the banishments, not only in the days of Claudius but, more than once, in those of Tiberius c. Yet something of Jewish narrowness may thus have been dissipated, and a clearer course made for the mission of S. Paul. It can hardly be doubted, however, that Jews would greatly predominate in numbers among the believers in Rome, whatever success Aquila and Priscilla and their friends may have had in introducing Gentiles.

We can be at no loss to understand the anxiety Felt imof S. Paul from the first to carry his mission to Rome.

c Whose clemency is nevertheless owned by Philo.-Leg. ad Cai.

portance of

the heart of the Empire, boasting itself the Eternal City.' Rome may be said to have naturally belonged to his position as God's ambassador to the Gentiles. Not recognizing it as S. Peter's sphere, he had long felt, and now owned, that he must have fruit of ch. i. 9-13. his Apostolate' there. Hitherto it had not been possible, and even now it might be dangerous; but this consideration would not deter him. The thought which stirred within him before he left Ephesus, ‘I must see Rome;' the vision that soon afterwards came to him in Jerusalem, that he must bear witness xxii. 25-29; in Rome also;' even his natural feeling as a Roman XXV. 10-12; citizen, which was so perpetually showing itself; xxviii. 19. all point in the same direction. For S. Paul to have

Acts xix. 21.

Acts xvi. 37, 38;

xxiii. 11;

Contemplation of the

Corinth.

omitted Rome would have been wholly unintelligible. In what terms then would he be expected to have written to that metropolis of the world, while thus cherishing the thought of personally carrying on the work of the Gospel there?

Pausing at Corinth, the contemplation of his whole future from mission at this moment was one, surely, of surpassing solemnity. Looking from that lofty rock, standing there as he did probably for the last time, with the corrupt city of the isthmus lying beneath, he might see from afar the western sea, and then turning next to the more familiar east, would recall its long sacred history. On the one side there lay the untrodden sphere of the Divine work assigned to him; and on the other his natural home, the land of his fathers. The vastness of the charge that he had accepted could be no secret now. To him, a

IV.] QUESTIONS AT SAME TIME SUGGESTED,

son of Abraham, how overwhelming the retrospect; and how more amazing still the prospect opening before his faith of a salvation that was hourly felt to be nearer than when he first believed.'

To estimate aright the duty of the present was urgent. No one could muse awhile with S. Paul at this crisis without feeling it.

109

ch. xiii. 11.

tions sug

in the

Providence;

Must not the past and the future of the heavenly The Quesdispensations be, in some real sense, a harmonious gested, whole? And could that old priority of the Hebrew ch. i. 16. people, which had been so emphatically asserted in the plans of Providence, be without permanent meaning? In other words, was the old Covenant to pass away, and the new to come in, without any principle as to their relation? Or, to put the case in a form yet more touching to the Apostle's patriotic nature, were his Jewish brethren, with all their inheritance as to the place of of wondrous memories, to be left to find an un- the Gospel marked place in the future? Or, yet once more, scheme of and even more practically, was that social system which had existed with so much of Divine sanction ch. ii. 17. among the ancient people of God, to be dissolved? And further, was the social polity of the heathen world also better surely than unordered licence— to be everywhere seriously disturbed, if not broken up? And this with no comprehensive suggestions as to what should take its place? For what, in fine, if the state of Christian duties contemplated in his late advice to Corinth should prove to be not so transitory as he had supposed d? How, in that d Lect. III. p. 88.

ch. i. 16.

as to the general

moral cor

ruption,

case, would the Gospel display itself as a 'Power of God' in the world, as S. Paul had proclaimed it to be?

Such were questions which could not but rise before his mind, and which forced him now to write. the fewness True, they might not all be ready for elucidation. tians, and Much might be involved in them which must wait deadness of for moral development; but evidently some deter

of Chris

the rest:

13.

mining principles should at once be known, if perilous mistakes were to be avoided. We admit that in Acts xx. 27. some places the oral teaching of his Apostolate had given guidance; but not everywhere, and not in Rome. He felt this himself; for to deal with these ch. i. 1, 5, questions by word or by epistle,' was the special work committed to him as 'Apostle' of the Gentiles. opeixerns. It was 'due from him;' and so before his departure for Jerusalem he resolved to leave on record what was 'intrusted' to him as to the position of the Gospel in the great scheme of Providence and Probation, as a whole, comprehending Greek and Jew, wise and unwise, civilized and barbarous. Might he not also justly reckon on thoughtful listeners at Rome while he thus discoursed of the 'mystery of God in Christ?'

Rom. i. 14.

ch. i. 14.

(1.)

He begins, therefore, from the point where he was The general corruption. then standing, a 'first philosophy' of Christianity as the spiritual and moral system needed for man. Not only among his own countrymen in Syria and Palestine, but in those great places of active life where he had lately sojourned, and in the remoter regions of Asia which he had traversed 'round about to

IV.]

OF PROBATION.

111

Illyricum,' the experience of years had brought close to him, as to every other real observer, the fact of the deep moral degradation of mankind everywhere. From the foreground of the panorama to its most distant perspective, he saw nothing to relieve the ruinous desolation; and he at once expresses this with terse energy, in the first page of his letter to Rome. At the dark view which is before him, the Psalmist's none righteous, no, not one,' rises ch. iii. 10. instinctively to his lips.

(2.) The Chris

small party.

Amidst this universal defection from goodness, some men doubtless, a goodly company, had in that tians a generation been led one by one, 'one of a city and two of a family,' to faith in God and in 'Jesus Christ Whom He had sent.' But what was to be said to the great fact of the continued and untouched blindness and sinfulness of the great masses of mankind, most of whom had not even heard of the coming of a Moral Deliverer, nor at the present rate of progress could be hoped to do so?-In discussing this grave are blinded. theme, the Apostle announces and enforces the three ch. xi. 7. propositions, which are indeed statements of fact from which he cannot shrink, and which he morally vindicates: first, as we have said, that all have sinned, Tns dóns and come short of Righteousness;' next, that only

an 'election has obtained it' in Christ; and lastly,

that the rest are blinded.' If we would understand with the Apostle how these things can be, we must follow him closely as to each of his statements.

II. Nothing can be more exact in all its parts than

(3.) The many

ch. iii. 23.

τοῦ Θεοῦ.

II.