revelation being to produce faith in all to whom the publication of this good news of salvation might reach. The apostle does not here bring the quotation out of Habakkuk ii. 4 as a prophecy fulfilled in the gospel; nor, on the other hand, is it a mere ornament, as we use classical quotations. It is manifestly employed to give strength to the argument, and must therefore have some connexion with it. That connexion lies in the conformity of the evangelical doctrine of justification by faith, with the principles admitted by the saints of the old Testament, and acted upon in the moral government of God. Whoever turns to the prophet Habakkuk, will observe that the passage is not, as some commentators have represented it, a declaration that those who believed God's word as to the invasion of the Chaldeans, and submitted to them, should live. The words have no such meaning; but stand in a connexion which obliges us to a very different interpretation. The prophet had had a vision of the destruction of the Babylonian power. This was accompanied with an intimation that the event would be delayed; yet "though the vision tarry, wait for it," wait for its accomplishment in steadfast faith; which leads to a general observation, applicable to all the revelations of God; that the souls of men, “not upright,” lift themselves up against God, in proud rejection of his testimony; but that "the just shall live by his faith," that is, it shall be life and salvation. So the just have always lived by faith in the revelations of God; and so says the apostle, as this is a standing rule of God's moral government, those who believe the revelation of God's method of justifying men by faith shall live by it. Those who render the passage, The just by faith, shall live, forget that this is not Old Testament language; and nothing is gained by it.

Verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven.-Critics have differed

as to the connexion of these words with the preceding. Some regard yap as having an inchoative form, as marking the commencement of St. Paul's argument with the Gentiles, drawn from their sinful condition, and consequent need of pardon. Others think that there is an implied contrast between the gospel and the law of nature, the former proclaiming salvation, the latter denouncing wrath against offenders. But the usual force of the particle is best retained, and it marks the connexion to be, that the gospel is the more worthy to be published and embraced as the power of God unto salvation, because of the actual and extreme danger of men as sinners. In the gospel there is a revelation of a divinely appointed method of pardon; and the necessity and value of this is grounded upon another and previous revelation of the wrath of God against all ungodliness, &c. That revelation of the judicial vengeance of God against sin was contained in the traditional law of the Gentiles, sometimes called natural law, confirmed and illustrated by the course of God's moral government, and by the books of the Old Testament, so that both Gentiles and Jews had the means of knowing that the wages of sin is death, and indeed generally acknowledged it. This point the apostle does not therefore proceed to prove. The testimony of tradition, however perverted, the voice of conscience, the fact of man's subjection to suffering and death, and the obvious connexion of every species of sin with misery, were all witnesses to the Gentiles of the penal danger to which sin exposed them; and as to the Jews, their own law fulminated its curse against every transgression. The apostle therefore assumes that it will be granted by both, that the Supreme Lawgiver has connected misery and death with sin; and he therefore goes on to prove, that both Gentiles and Jews were actually guilty and under con

;

demnation, and on this ground builds the grand doctrinal position of the early part of this epistle, that we are "justified freely by the grace of God, through the redemption which is in, or by, Jesus Christ."

Ungodliness and unrighteousness.—These two terms express all possible human offences. Ungodliness comprehends all sins against God; unrighteousness, all offences against men. The one includes all forgetfulness of God, or contempt of him, or false worship,-all atheism, practical or speculative, all idolatry, superstition, and rebellion against his authority; the other, all injustice and uncharitableness. The words are not, however, used distinctively; and areßeia is sometimes used of sin in general.

Who hold the truth in unrighteousness. -This may be taken in the sense of restraining the truth by unrighteousness, without going along with those who think that those wicked magistrates and philosophers were intended who, though they knew better than the populace, in many respects, yet encouraged the popular superstition, from political motives. There is much truth in the fact; but the apostle is speaking too generally to allow us to think that he had any respect to this particular, and indeed very partial,

tiles; whereas, it is obvious that the apostle speaks of the Gentiles in general, as indeed his argument required. For it would have answered no purpose to prove the guilt of politicians and sages only, when it was necessary to show that "the whole world was guilty before God."

Verse 19. That which may be known of God. Not certainly all that is humanly knowable respecting God,-cognoscibile Dei; for the gospel is a far brighter manifestation of God than any which the most favoured times of paganism could boast. To yvwoтov is evidently used for n yvwois, the knowledge of God; for St. Paul often uses neuter adjectives for substantives. This was manifest among them; for God had shewed it to them. The original traditions from the patriarchs respecting God had been all along confirmed and attested by the visible works of God; so that the idea of God, his nature and government, being transmitted from age to age, serious and reflecting minds might have been established in these truths, and might have pursued them to profitable moral conclusions. Human reason was never left to acquire, for the first time, the knowledge of the existence of God from his works; but that doctrine being already in the world, the works of God made their constant appeal to the reason of man, presented to it an evidence of the most convincing kind, and opened courses of ennobling and sanctifying thought which, if they had taken the least delight in them, would have preserved men from all the degrading polytheism which followed.

Verse 20. For the invisible things, &c. -By this expression is meant, the invisible attributes of God, and consequently his invisible self. The statues of the supposed heathen deities attempted to make visible their various attributes, by em

blematical devices and symbolical sculptures. Here the apostle, by asserting the invisibility of God, declares, in fact, his ineffable and indescribable majesty, which is not to be represented by any human device, but to have its only proper manifestation in the glorious and magnificent works of his own hand. By these the invisible God, in his attributes, is seen by his attentive creatures. The apostle says, Ta aopaтa, the invisible things or properties of God, because his essence is undiscovered and undiscoverable. We know him only by the perfections which he is pleased to manifest. There may be perfections which he has never manifested to us, and which we are in no state of preparation mentally to apprehend, even in the feeblest manner. The essence of even created minds is hidden from us; much more the essence of God; that in which all these properties of glory and majesty unite.

From the creation of the world.-This is equivalent to, the created world. Some choose to render it, SINCE the creation, that is, from the time of the creation; alleging that awo is the preposition used. But aro is used to express the cause or instrument, and is then properly rendered, by means of; and there seems no reason why St. Paul should put it into his argument, that God had been manifest by his works ever since the creation, because it was sufficient for his purpose to show, that they were clearly so at that moment, and, if then, of course in all preceding ages. The use too of the present tense, Kalорaтαι, are clearly seen, shows that he was speaking of the time when he wrote.

so that they are

witnesses. These, he says, these invisible things are understood, voouueva, mentally seen or apprehended,-mente animoque cernuntur, as Rosenmuller renders it,—by the things that are made, and which are indubitable proofs of the wisdom and power of their Maker, though he is invisible. Some include in the Ta Tomμara all the operations of Ged in his moral government, and the previous dispensation of grace; and it is certain that the word used is wide enough in its meaning to comprehend them. The argument, however, rather binds us to take it in its stricter sense of the creation and preservation of those things which are visible in the frame and constitution of the world. But it by no means follows from this, that the apostle intended to teach that the principles of God's moral government, his will, and our duties and hopes, in a word, all that has been termed natural religion, is to be learned by the study of physics, and that the visible world is a sufficient book for man. The apostle knew well that both among Gentiles and Jews, from the earliest ages, there had been communications of moral truth in direct revelations, and traditions of those revelations; that the world had never been without moral laws, or without promises of redemption: and what he knew to be fact, universally acknow ledged by those to whom he writes, he assumes; and considers, therefore, that what proves the existence of that God, made known, as to his will and designs, in these early and widely diffused revelations, gave authority also to all the truth which had ever been connected with the doctrine. He assumes, in fact, what we see assumed throughout the scriptures, that God communicated the knowledge of himself and his will originally to mankind; that this knowledge, though disregarded and darkened, was never wholly that the visible creation was a standing testimony to it as existing, not the means of first revealing it, nor of reco

lost;

vering it through a process of reasoning, if, in any instance, entirely lost.

Eternal power and godhead.—The first impression made upon the mind, by a general survey of creation, is power; power without limits, power which we know operates undeviatingly and unweariedly from age to age, and stands therefore as a mighty confirmation of the original doctrine always connected with the idea of God,-his eternity. Power, however, comprehends other attributes. That power which we see in creation is not blind might, but the might of intelligence and of goodness, all which may be included in THE ENERGY of God: but as these are separate attributes, they naturally lead us up to the Being whose attributes they are; and to the distinctive, general character of that Being; that which distinguishes him from all others; that which marks him as the supreme, the eternal ONE: which distinctive character is expressed by the apostle, by BELOTNS, Godhead, or Divinity, from Oelos, the same as Oeos, God. To Oetov is often used by Greek writers for the Divine Being, the Deity.

So that they are without excuse.-They were inexcusable for their ignorance, which was the result of criminal inattention to the testimonies of God, with which they were surrounded; and for their superstitions and idolatries, which were wilful perversions and wicked corruptions of the truths they knew, through the grossness of the imagination produced by immoral habits and vicious principles, fatal to spirituality of mind in religion, and therefore destructive of its true character. They were without excuse, because neither their ignorance of God, nor their errors or idolatries, resulted from any necessity, but were the objects of their free choice.

Verse 21. Because that, when they knew God. That is, THOUGH they knew God;

knew him indeed sufficiently to have preserved them from the baseness of idolatry, and have laid the foundation of trust in him, and the giving of honour and worship to him. Nor is this at all contrary to what the apostle says in his first epistle to the Corinthians, that the world "by wisdom knew not God;" since it is certain that what they called wisdom, or philosophy, was one main cause of corrupting the original theology of the Gentile nations; and that its speculations only served to feed the grossest parts of idolatry. For instance, the early philosophic doctrine of pantheism, teaching that God is all things, and all things God, gave a sort of divinity to every part of nature, and rendered it more easy for men to bring themselves to deify its elements and all remarkable and powerful agents or principles. Yet although, as to all the civilized nations of antiquity, and many of the barbarous nations also, we have sufficient evidence that they knew and admitted the existence of one supreme and only true God, yet they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, or offered to him thanksgiving. To glorify God is to worship him because of his own perfections and majesty; to give thanks to him is an act of worship founded upon the benefits we receive from him. In the former we celebrate his glories; in the latter, proclaim his goodness: the former is founded upon admiration, love, and trust; the latter springs from gratitude, and is the source and root of universal and constant obedience. The expression, did not glorify him as GOD, is emphatic. They were not ignorant of his existence; their poets and other writers sometimes said noble things respecting him; just as the idolaters of India speak in terms of highest honour of one supreme God at the present day, who, however, as they think, concerns not himself with them; and they, therefore, as to worship, wholly forget him.

What we know of the idolatrous worship of civilized nations of the present day throws, indeed, great light upon the idolatry of more ancient times. The interposition of intermediate ideal beings, and the deification of creatures, have not among the people in India obliterated all knowledge of God; and, in their older sacred books, as in the writings of the Greeks, there are occasionally just and sublime things said of God, the traditions of better ages still keeping their hold upon the convictions of the mind. But these imaginary deities have wholly displaced the supreme God in their thoughts, and he is neither trusted in nor worshipped; the immediate government of the world is supposed to be in other hands, and all religious honour and service has been transferred to them. Throughout India not a temple is built to this very supreme God, whom all but those of the Budhist faith, who are atheists, acknowledge; and not a prayer is offered. This seems to have been pretty nearly the fact, in the more civilized nations of antiquity, when St. Paul wrote. That they had knowledge of the true God, we have St. Paul's testimony, as well as proofs in those extracts from numerous oriental, Greek, and Latin writers, which have been often brought to illustrate this subject; but that they erected a single temple to him, we have no satisfactory evidence. It is true that by the Zeus or Jupiter of both Greeks and Romans was sometimes meant, though not usually nor popularly, the supreme God, the Jehovah of the Old Testament; but we have most satisfactory evidence, though of an incidental kind, even in inspired writ, that, by the Jupiter to whom temples were erected, and honours were regularly paid, this supreme Deity was not intended, but the Jupiter of the popular mythology. For if any one of the temples at Athens, though it were of Jupiter himself, had been erected to the true God, though under a foreign name and some misconceptions of his true attributes, the apostle Paul, who had been about the city observing the "devotions" of the inhabitants, would scarcely have been driven to the necessity of fixing upon a solitary

"altar," ," without a priesthood or regular service, an apparently neglected place of accidental offering, as the text of his sermon, because it contained an inscription "TO GOD UNKNOWN," and was probably a relic of the piety of past days, in some individual acknowledging that there was a God of perfections above the knowledge of creatures, a God incomprehensible, who ought to be worshipped. Surely, if there had been a single temple in the whole city, or state, or even Greece itself, which had been dedicated to the same being as this isolated and neglected altar, he would have found in this an admission in favour of his argument much more powerful and convincing, and one which it is evident, from his quoting one of their poets, he would have been glad to avail himself of. The very fact, therefore, that they had no temples erected to the true God, no public service offered to him, proves the apostle's words: they glorified him not as GOD, as the immediate ruler of the world, as the giver of good, or the avenger of evil, or as possessing attributes to be acknowledged, adored, and imitated. To use the expressive language of the Old Testament, they wholly forgat God," and gave his glory to them which are no Gods.

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But became vain in their imaginations. -Εν τοις διαλογισμοις, in their thoughts and opinions. The word may indeed be taken for the reasonings of the philosophers; but we are to guard against those commentators who interpret the apostle as speaking principally of the heathen sages. He includes them, it is true, but, as his argument requires, in the mass of Gentiles, princes, magistrates, philosophers, priests, and people. The gross tendency to superstition in the mass, and the various doubtful or most erroneous speculations concerning the divine nature among the pretended wise, and the artifice of priests to increase ceremonies, and visible objects of superstitious regard, for the sake of the gifts brought to their rival shrines, all produced opinions among the Gentiles generally in favour of idolatry; for of this St. Paul especially speaks. To become vain is, in the language of a Jew,