The struggles of an enlightened,

A.M. cir. 4062. God, after the inward man:

A. D. cir. 58.
An. Olymp.

cir. CCIX. 2.

A. M.cir. 4062,
Olimp

my mind, and bringing me into 'cap

23 But I see another law in my tivity to the law of sin which is in my

A.U.C.cir.811. members, warring against the law of members.

a 2 Cor. 4. 16. Eph. 3. 16. Col. 3. 9, 10.- Gal. 5. 17. ch. 6.

b Ch. 8. 7. & 12. 2. Eph. 4. 23. Jam. 4. 1.

A. D. cir. 58.
An.

A.U.C.cir.811.

13, 19.

is wished, or to perform what is desired, sin continually mean no more than this, that there are some inward faculties prevails.

The word vopos, law, in this verse, must be taken as implying any strong or confirmed habit, ovvyear, as Iesychius renders it, under the influence of which the man generally acts; and in this sense, the apostle most evidently uses it in ver. 23.

Verse 22. I delight in the law of God after the inward man] Every Jew, and every unregenerate man, who receives the Old Testament as a revelation from God, must acknowledge the great purity, excellence, and utility of its maxims, &c. though he will ever find, that without the grace of our Lord Jesus, he can never act according to those heavenly maxims; and without the mercy of God, can never be redeemed from the curse entailed upon him for his past transgressions. To say that the inward man means the regenerate part of the soul, is supportable by no argument.

Ο εσω αν

θρωπος, and ὁ εντος ανθρωπος, especially the latter, are expressions frequently in use among the purest Greek ethic writers, to signify the soul or rational part of man, in opposition to the body of flesh; see the quotations in Wetstein from Plato and Plotinus. The Jews have the same form of expression; so in Yalcut Rubeni, fol. 10. 3. it is said, The flesh is the inward garment of the man; but the SPIRIT is the INWARD man, the garment of which is the body; and St. Paul uses the phrase in precisely the same sense, in 2 Cor. iv. 16. and in Eph. iii. 16. If it be said, that it is impossible for an unregenerate man to delight in the law of God, the experience of millions contradicts the assertion. Every true penitent admires the moral law; longs most earnestly for a conformity to it; and feels that he can never be satisfied till he awakes up after this divine likeness; and he hates himself, because he feels that he has broken it, and that his evil passions are still in a state of hostility to it.

in the soul, which delight in the law of God. This expression is particularly adapted to the principles of the Pharisees, of whom St. Paul was one before his conversion. They received the law as the oracles of God, and confessed that it deserved the most serious regard. Their veneration was inspired by a sense of its original, and a full conviction that it was true. To some parts of it they paid the most superstitious regard. They had it written upon their phylacteries, which they carried about with them at all times. It was of ten read and expounded in their synagogues: and they took delight in studying its precepts. On that account, both the prophets and our Lord agree in saying, that they delighted in the law of God, though they regarded not its chief and most essential precepts." See farther observations on this point at the end of the chapter.

So far, then, is it from being true, that none but a REGENERATE man can delight in the law of God, we find that even a proud, unhumbled PHARISEE can do it; and much more a poor sinner, who is humbled under a sense of his sin, and sees, in the light of God, not only the spirituality, but the excellence of the divine law.

Vere 23. But I see another law in my members] Though the person in question is less or more under the continual influence of reason and conscience, which offer constant testimony against sin; yet, as long as help is sought only from the law, and the grace of Christ in the gospel is not received, the remonstrances of reason and conscience are rendered of no effect, by the prevalence of sinful passions; which, from repeated gratifications, have acquired all the force of habit; and now give law to the whole carnal man.

Warring against the law of my mind] There is an allusion here to the case of a city besieged, at last taken by storm, and the inhabitants carried away into captivity; avispa TEVOμLevov, carrying on a system of warfare; laying continual siege to the soul; repeating incessantly its attacks; harrass

The following observations of a pious, and sensible writer on this subject, cannot be unacceptable. "The inward man always signifies the mind; which either may, or may not, being, battering, and storming the spirit; and, by all these asthe subject of grace. That which is asserted of either the inward or outward man, is often performed by one member or power, and not with the whole. If any member of the body perform an action, we are said to do it with the body, although the other members be not employed. In like manner, if any power or faculty of the mind be employed about any action, the soul is said to act. This expression, therefore, I delight in the law of God, after the inward man, can

saults, reducing the man to extreme misery. Never was a picture more impressively drawn, and more effectually finished; for the next sentence shews, that this spiritual city was at last taken by storm, and the inhabitants who survived the sackage, led into the most shameful, painful, and op. pressive captivity.

Bringing me into captivity to the low of sin] He does not here speak of an occasional advantage gained by sin, it

Till chok'd with stench, the lingering wretches lay,
And, in the loath'd embraces, dyed away!

diabolically invented punishment.

Pitt.

was a complete and final victory gained by corruption; which, having stormed and reduced the city, carried away the inhabitants with irresistible force, into captivity. This is the consequence of being overcome; he was now in the Servius remarks, in his comment on this passage, that hands of the foe, as the victor's lawful captive; and this is Sanies, mortui est; tabo viventis scilicet sanguis: "the the import of the original word, aixpaλwrikorra; and is the sanies, or putrid ichor, from the dead body, produced the very term used by our Lord when speaking of the final ruin, tabes in the blood of the living." Roasting, burning, rackdispersion, and captivity of the Jews, he says, aixualuri-ing, crucifying, &c. were nothing, when compared to this broovrai, they shall be led away captives into all the nations, Luke xxi. 24. When all this is considered, who, in his right mind, can apply it to the holy soul of the apostle of the Gentiles? Is there any thing in it that can belong to his gracious state? Surely, nothing. The basest slave of sin, who has any remaining checks of conscience, cannot be brought into a worse state than that described here by the apostle. Sin and corruption have a final triumph; and conscience and reason taken prisoners, laid in fetters, and sold for slaves. Can this ever be said of a man, in whom the Spirit of God dwells; and whom the law of the Spirit of life, in Christ Jesus, has made free from the law of sin and death? See chap. viii. 2.

We may naturally suppose, that the cry of such a person would be, Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this dead body? And how well does this apply to the case of the person to whom the apostle refers? A body, a whole mass of sin and corruption was bound to his soul, with chains which he could not break; and the mortal contagion transfused through his whole nature, was pressing him down to the bitter pains of an eternal death. He now finds that the law can afford him no deliverance; and he despairs of help from any human being; but while he is emitting his last, or almost expiring groan, the redemption by Christ Jesus is proclaimed to him; and, if the apostle refers to his Verse 24. O wretched man that I am, &c.] This affect- own case, Ananias unexpectedly accosts him with, Brother ing account is finished more impressively by the groans of Saul! the Lord Jesus, who hath appeared unto thee in the the wounded captive. Having long maintained a useless con- way, hath sent me unto thee, that thou mightest receive thy flict against innumerable hosts and irresistible might, he is sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost. He sees then an at last wounded and taken prisoner; and, to render his state open door of hope, and he immediately, though but in the more miserable, is not only encompassed by the slaughtered, prospect of this deliverance, returns God thanks for the wellbut chained to a dead body; for there seems to be here an al-grounded hope which he has of salvation, through Jesus lusion to an ancient custom of certain tyrants, who bound a dead body to a living man, and obliged him to carry it about, till the contagion from the putrid mass took away his life! Virgil paints this in all its horrors, in the account he gives of the tyrant Mezentius. Eneid. lib. viii. ver. 485.

Quid memorem infandas cædes, quid facta tyranni—
MORTUA quin etiam jungebat corpora VIVIS,
Componens manibusque manus, atque oribus ora;
Tormenti genus! et sanie taboque fluentis
Complexu in misero, longâ, sic morte necabat.
What tongue can such barbarities record,
Or count the slaughters of his ruthless sword?
'Twas not enough the good, the guiltless bled,
Still worse, he bound the living to the dead:
These, limb to limb, and face to face, he joined;
Oh! monstrous crime, of unexampled kind!

Christ our Lord.

Verse 25. I thank God through Jesus Christ] Instead of suxapisw тw ew, I thank God; several excellent MSS. with the Vulgate, some copies of the Itala, and several of the Fathers, read η χάρις του Θεού, or του Κυρίου, the grace of God, or the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ; this is an an swer to the almost despairing question in the preceding verse. The whole, therefore, may be read thus: O wretched man that I am, whọ shall deliver me from the body of this death? ANSWER-The grace of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Thus we find, that a case of the kind described by the apostle in the preceding verses, whether it were his own, before he was brought to the knowledge of Christ, particularly during the three days that he was at Damascus, without being able to eat or drink, in deep penitential sorrow; or whether he personates a Pharisaic, yet conscientious Jew, deeply concerned for his salvation; I say, we find that such

a case can be relieved by the gospel of Christ only: or, in other words, that no scheme of redemption can be effectual to the salvation of any soul, whether Jew or Gentile, but that laid down in the gospel of Christ.

Lt any, or all means be used, which human wisdom can devise, guilt will still continue uncancelled; and in-bred sin || will laugh them all to scorn, prevail over them, and finally triumph. And this is the very conclusion to which the apostle brings his argument in the following clause; which, I ke the rest of the chapter, has been most awfully abused, to favour anti-evangelical purposes.

of the preceding chapter.

efficient law; and he was left in thraldom under an equally inefficient gospel. The very genius of Christianity demonstrates that nothing like this, can, with any propriety, be spoken of a genuine Christian.

3. But, it is farther supposed, that these things cannot be spoken of a proud or wicked Jew; yet we learn the contrary from the infallible testimony of the word of God. Of this people, in their fullen and iniquitous state, God says by his prophet, They SEEK me DAILY, and DELIGHT to know my ways, as a nation that did RIGHTEOUSNESS, and FORSOOK not the ORDINANCES of their God: they ask me of the ordinances of JUSTICE, and TAKE DELIGHT in approuching to God, Isai. Iviii. 2. Can any thing be stronger than this? And yet, at that time, they were most dreadfully carnal, and sold under sin, as the rest of that chapter proves. It is a most notorious fact, that how little soever the life of a Jew was conformed to the law of his God, he notwith

and the apostle says nothing stronger of them in this chapter, than their conduct and profession verify to the present day. They are still delighting in the law of God, after the inward man; with their mind, serving the law of God; ask

So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God] That this clause contains the inference from the preceding train of argumentation, appears evident from the asa ouv, therefore, with which the apostle introduces it. As if he had said "To conclude, the sum of what I have advanced, concerning the power of sin in the carnal man, and the utter insufficiency of all human means, and legal observances to par-standing professed the highest esteem for it, and gloried in it: don sin, and expel the corruption of the heart, is this, that the very same person, the auros εy, the same I, while without the gospel, under the killing power of the law, will find in himself two opposite principles, the one subscribing to, and approving the law of God; and the other notwithstanding for the ordinances of justice, seeking God daily, and taking, bringing him into captivity to sin: his inward man, his rational powers and conscience, will assent to the justice and propriety of the requisitions of the law; and yet, notwithstanding this, his fleshly appetites, the law in his members, will war against the law of his mind, and continue, till he receives the gospel of Christ, to keep him in the galling captivity of sin and death."

1. The strong expressions in this clause have led many to conclude, that the apostle himself, in his regenerated state, is indisputably the person intended. That all that is said in this chapter, of the carnal man, sold under sin, did apply to Saul of Tarsus, no man can doubt that what is here said can ever be with propriety, applied to Paul the Apostle, who can believe? Of the former, all is natural; of the latter, all here said would be monstrous, and absurd, if not blasphemous.

2. But it is supposed that the words must be understood as implying a regenerate man, because the apostle says, ver. 22, I delight in the law of God; and in this verse, I myself, with the mind, serve the law of God. These things, say the objectors, cannot be spoken of a wicked Jew, but of a regenerate man, such as the apostle then was. But when we find that the former verse speaks of a man who is brought into captivity to the law of sin and death; surely there is no part of the regenerate state of the apostle, to which the words can possibly apply. Had he been in captivity to the law of sin and death, after his conversion to C' ristianity; what did he gain by that conversion? Nothing for his personal holiness. He had found no salvation under an in

And con

ing delight in approaching to God; they even glory, and
greatly exult and glory, in the Divine original and excellency
of their Law; and all this while they are most abominably
carnal, sold under sin, and brought into the most degrading
captivity, to the law of sin and death. If then, all that the
apostle states of the person in question, be true of the Jews,
through the whole period of their history, even to the pre-
sent time:-If they do, in all their professions, and their
religious services, which they zealously maintain, confess,
and conscientiously too, that the law is holy, and the com-
mandment holy, just, and good; and yet, with their flesh,
serve the law of sin; the same certainly may be said with
equal propriety of a Jewish penitent, deeply convinced of his
lost estate, and the total insufficiency of his legal observances
to deliver him from his body of sin and death.
sequently, all this may be said of Paul the Jew, while going
about to establish his own righteousness, his own plan of jus-
tification; he had not as yet submitted to the righteousness
of God, the divine plan of redemption by Jesus Christ.
4. It must be allowed that, whatever was the experience of
so eminent a man, Christian, and Apostle, as St. Paul, it
must be a very proper standard of Christianity. And if we
are to take what is here said, as his experience as a Christian,
it would be presumption in us to expect to go higher; for, he
certainly had pushed the principles of his religion to their
utmost consequences. But his whole life, and the account
which he immediately gives of himself in the succeeding
chapter prove, that he, as a Christian and an Apostle, had a
widely different experience; an experience which amply jus
tifies that superiority, which he attributes to the Christian

The blessedness of those

CHAP. VIII.

who believe in Christ.

religion over the Jewish; and demonstrates that it not only || dwarfish state: at the same time, we should not be disis well calculated to perfect all preceding dispensations; but couraged at what we thus feel, but apply to God, through that it affords salvation to the uttermost, to all those who Christ, as Paul did; and then we shall soon be able, with flee for refuge to the hope that it sets before them. Besides, him, to declare to the eternal glory of God's grace, that there is nothing spoken here of the state of a conscientious the law of the Spirit of life, in Christ Jesus, has made us Jew, or of St. Paul in his Jewish state, that is not true of free from the law of sin and death. This is the inheritance every genuine penitent; even before, and it may be, long be- of God's children; and their salvation is of me, saith the fore, he has believed in Christ, to the saving of his soul. Lord. The assertion, that "every Christian, howsoever advanced in the Divine life, will, and must feel all this inward conflict, &c." is as untrue as it is dangerous. That many, called Christians, and probably sincere, do feel all this, may be readily granted; and such we must consider to be in the same state with Saul of Tarsus, previously to his conversion; but that they must continue thus, is no where intimated in the gospel of Christ. We must take heed how we make our experience, which is the result of our unbelief and unfaithfulness, the standard for the people of God; and lower down Christianity to our most reprehensible and

I cannot conclude these observations, without recommending to the notice of my Readers, a learned and excellent discourse on the latter part of this chapter, preached by the Rev. James Smith, minister of the gospel in Dumfermline, Scotland; a work to which I am indebted for some useful observations, and from which I should have been glad to have copied much, had my limits permitted. Reader, do not plead for Baal; try, fully try, the efficiency of the blood of the covenant; and be not content with less salvation than God has provided for thee. Thou art not straightened in God, be not straightened in thy own bowels.

CHAPTER VIII.

The happy state of those who believe in Christ, and walk under the influence of His Spirit, 1, 2. The design of God in sending his Son into the world, was to redeem men from sin, 3, 4. The miserable state of the carnally minded, 5-8. How Christ lives and works in his followers; their blessedness here, and their happiness hereafter, 9-17. Sufferings are the common lot of all men; and from which Gentiles and Jews have the hope of being finally delivered, 18-23. The use and importance of hope, 24, 25. The Spirit makes intercession in the followers of Christ, 26, 27. All things work together for good to them that love God, and who act according to his gracious purpose in calling them, 28. The means used to bring men to eternal glory, 29, 30. The great blessedness, confidence, and security of all genuine Christians, whom, while they hold fast faith and a good conscience, nothing can separate from the love of God, 31–39.

NOTES ON CHAP. VIII. Verse 1. There is, therefore, now no condemnation] To do justice to St. Paul's reasoning, this chapter must be read in the closest connection with the preceding. There we have seen the unavailing struggles of an awakened Jew, who sought pardon and holiness from that law which he was conscious he had broken, and in which he could find no provision for pardon; and no power to sanctify. This conviction having brought him to the very brink of despair; and

Gal. 2. 19. & 5. 1.- 1 Cor. 15. 45. 2 Cor. 3. 6.

being on the point of giving up all hope, he hears of redemption by Jesus Christ, thanks God for the prospect he has of salvation, applies for, and receives it; and now magnifies God for the unspeakable gift of which he has been made a partaker.

Those who restrain the word now, so as to indicate by it the gospel dispensation only, do not take in the whole of the apostle's meaning. The apostle has not been dealing in general matters only, but also in those which are particular.

A. M.cir. 4062. me free from the law of sin and sending his own Son in the likeness A. M.cir.4062, of sinful flesh, and "for sin, condemned sin in the flesh :

He has not been pointing out merely the difference between the two dispensations, the Mosaic and the Christian; but he marks out the state of a penitent under the former, and that of a believer under the latter. The last chapter closed with an account of the deep distress of the penitent; this one opens with an account of his salvation. The now, therefore, in the text, must refer more to the happy tran-sible that they should have been the state of the same being, sition from darkness to light, from condemnation to pardon, which this believer now enjoys; than to the Christian dispensation taking the place of the Jewish economy.

Verse 2. For the law of the Spirit of life] The gospel of the grace of Christ, which is not only a law or rule of Verse 4. That the righteousness of the law might be ful life, but affords that sovereign energy by which guilt is re-filled in us] That the guilt might be pardoned through the moved from the conscience, the power of sin broken, and its merit of that sacrifice; and that we might be enabled, by the polluting influence removed from the heart. The law was a power of his own grace and Spirit, to walk in newness of spirit of death, by which those who were under it were life loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength; bound down, because of their sin, to condemnation and and our neighbour as ourselves: and thus the righteousness, death. The gospel proclaims Jesus the Saviour; and what the spirit, design, and purpose of the law is fulfilled in us, the law bound unto death, IT looses unto life eternal. And through the strength of the Spirit of Christ, which is here