ver. 22. observing to him, that it was then every where spoken against. This is the language of strangers to it; and the extreme coldness, or rather aversion, they shewed for it, on his first preaching it to them, does not at all favour the supposition of their having been previously believers. Neither this, nor the manner of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans suits the opinion, that he wrote it before he had seen that city. Whether St. Peter was ever there, is disputed by some. I believe he was, but that he built on the foundation laid by St. Paul, and was not therefore the founder, nor first bishop of the Roman church.

76. Romansi. 19, 20. Here it is made plain, that all idolaters are without excuse, inasmuch as that which may be known of God is manifest in themselves, and in the works of creation, even the eternal power and Godhead of the Creator. In the twenty-first verse it is said, that the idolaters knew God. By revelation they knew him from the beginning; and having his works of creation to demonstrate his infinite wisdom and goodness, they could have no excuse for their departure from him, and worshipping the creature; for they could not plead the want of means to keep up in their minds a knowledge so notified, so proved; but they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves wise, they became fools; so that, without a farther revelation, they could not be brought back to the use of common sense in this first aud greatest article of knowledge.

77. Ibid. ii. 14, 15. The Gentiles have written in their hearts an approbation of good, and an abhorrence of evil actions, instincts which become laws to them, as soon as they know it to be the will of their Creator that they should obey them. For this purpose they are in no need of the Mosaic law, if they come to Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life; and without whom no man cometh to the Father, either in knowledge or love. How can a man consider that to be a law, which he knows not to be the mind or dictate of any legislator? Of these Gentiles, Cornelius appears to be the first on record; and he too was brought to Christ by a particular and express revelation. The grace of God had been with his excellent dispositions, before the angel was sent to him.

78. Ibid. iii. 29. The God of the Old Testament, and of the New, is one and the same God, namely, Jesus Christ.

79. Ibid. ix. 3. (From) a most unfortunate translation for

(UTO) which signifies under! If vwo was used by St. Paul, as I verily believe it was. Paul here could wish to be a curse under Christ for his brethren, that as Christ was made a curse for us, Gal. iii, so he might be a secondary curse in humble imitation of Christ for the Jews, if that might be a means to bring them to Christ. In some hope that his suffering might possibly be of use in this respect, he thus speaks to the Colossians, i. 24. I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the suffering of Christ in the flesh, for his body's sake, which is the church.' I am sensible that the greater number of ancient copies had aro before Tov Xotorov, but some had uro, which, in a preposition so often abbreviated by transcribers into, perhaps, one mixed character, might easily give occasion to the mistake of the former for the latter; but the latter gives the passage so good and clear a sense, that I am convinced it was written by the apostle, and not the former, which seems to make that saint wish for his own damnation, rather than for that of his Jewish brethren. To be separated from Christ, and that with an anathema, or curse, could never have been the wish of St. Paul. The excellent Waterland, even retaining the arro, gives the passage nearly the same sense I do, from the use made by the same apostle of that preposition, 2 Tim. i. 2, 3. verses, where he sets himself forth as serving God aro from, after, or in the manner of, his progenitors, with a pure conscience.

80. Ibid. ix. from verse the 24th to verse 29th inclusive, the whole is parenthetical.

81. Ibid. xii. 20. (Heap coals of fire on his head.) Here our doing good for evil to our enemies, is an allusion to the chymical operation of placing some very hard body in a crucible, and adding fire below, around, and on the top of it, in order to bring that body into a state of fusion. The similitude of fire for Christian charity is most beautiful, and is highly improved by the idea of intenseness in the use of a crucible.

82. 1 Cor. i. 25. (The foolishness of God is wiser than men.) The Greek word, for which our translation puts (foolishness) is not μopia, which signifies (folly) but μwpov, a foolish thing; and what foolish thing can here be understood? I believe divine revelation, not so much because it may so be deemed by the Greek philosophers, as because, infinitely superior as it is to all the wisdom of men, it is that wherein God hath discovered far less of his wisdom than in his work of creation; for in the former

he speaks down to the capacities of men, as fathers among us do to their little children, who could not understand them, if spoken to in such language as fathers use to one another; though the difference here is so minute, if compared to the difference between God and man. With stammering lips and another tongue, God vouchsafes to speak to us his poor ignorant people. Isa. xxviii.11.

83. Ibid. i. 28. (Things that are not, to bring to nought things that are.) It is God who doth this, and calleth things that are not, as though they were. Rom. iv. 17.

84. Ibid. iii. 28. (Let him become a fool, that he may be wise.) No man ever became wise, until after he had found himself to be a fool, for how indeed should he? A man thinking himself full to the brim with knowledge, thinks he can hold no more, and therefore will not read, inquire, or take advice. However, the wisdom condemned in this text is worldly wisdom, and the wisdom recommended is spiritual. The worldly, of all men, is the most closely shut up against religion. His briars and thorns choke the word. Above all others he is that natural man, to whom the things of God are foolishness. If the grace of God was ever with him, he scatters it from him faster than he gathers money.

85. Ibid. vii. 31. (Not abusing) should be (not indulging themselves much in the enjoyment of it.) The context requires this interpretation, and the preposition κara signifies intensively, as well as contrarily.

86. Ibid. viii. 13. Instead of flest I make my brother to offend) it should be (lest I offend my brother.)

87. Ibid. xv. 28. Were this deep text found any where but in the Bible, we should think it a vain presumption to inquire into the meaning. As the distinction of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, with their respective offices in the economy of creation, redemption, and sanctification, was revealed as necessary to our understanding that economy, it appears to me, that the dominion over all things in heaven and earth committed to the Son, is to terminate as soon as the final judgment shall be passed; and that then God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, shall during eternity afterward, and to the whole intelligent creation, be God all in all, as the apostle expresses it rа πavra ev waσw, that is, all things, Father, Saviour, Comforter, in and to all things, without any ideas, or terms of distinction. If I am too bold here, I pray God to forgive me, and I trust he will, as I write with fear and trembling.

88. Ibid. xv. 29. (If the dead rise not, why are they them baptized for the dead?) This appears a difficult passage, insomuch that some heretics of old, laying hold of it, baptized a living person for one who had died unbaptized. The Marcionites were among these, whom Tertullian corrects by a very just interpretation of the passage. To be baptized for the dead, saith this father, is to be baptized for the body, which is declared to be dead by baptism; that is, we are baptized into the belief of the resurrection of the body, the death and resurrection of which are both represented in baptism. This interpretation, let me add, is justified by St. Paul himself, his own best interpreter, in the sixth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans. However, as his expression here in the fifteenth of his first Epistle to the Corinthians is VπEρ TWV VEKρWV, strictly speaking, upon the dead, it is hardly a doubt with me, no more than it was with several men of more learning than me, that some pious catechumens, even in the time of our apostle, chose to be baptized on the graves of martyrs in the nocturnal assemblies of the Christians, who, in time of persecution, met at night about those graves for every purpose of devotion and edification, in order to be more feelingly reminded of all Christian duties, and more especially of their federal engagements entered into in the sacrament of baptism. When persecution ceased, and they had the benefit of churches, this might have given occasion to their burying in or near those sacred edifices, and calling them by the names of the most distinguished martyrs and saints. This, I confess, is but matter of very probable conjecture, as we cannot trace the practice historically up to the time of St. Paul, though we may as far as a few centuries after.

89. Ibid. xv. 32. (Let us eat and drink, &c.) Eat, drink, and play, saith Sardanapalus in his epitaph at Tarsus, the birth place of St. Paul, which city, together with Auchiale, that luxurious prince is said to have built in one day.

90. Ephes. ii. 14. (Middle wall) which divided the Jews, repairing to the temple, from their Gentile converts, or half proselytes.

91. Philippians iii. 2. (Concision) cutting in sunder of the church by men not circumcised themselves, but insisting on the law to the division of Christ's body.

92. 2 Thess. ii. 3. (He who now letteth or hindereth.) The Roman emperor, or empire; for antichrist could not come until the dissolution of that empire, and then did come in the character

of a man that is worshipped, so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. It was this prophecy that alarmed the primitive Christians in such a manner, that though persecuted by the Romans, they continually and earnestly prayed for the preservation of that empire, lest a tyranny more destructive of true religion should succeed it, which soon followed on the irruption of the northern nations.

93. 1 Tim. v. 17. 19. (Let the elders, &c.) these were the same with bishops, chapter iii. and here subject to the jurisdiction of Timothy. The terms, apostle, evangelist, bishop, elder, were not used technically, but sometimes promiscuously, by the writers of the New Testament. Here however the powers of three offices, one ruling, and the other two subordinate, are kept distinct. Timothy governs, and the elders and deacons obey. This government and subordination was originally the appointment of the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls; and here by the Holy Spirit set forth in fact as ruled and established for the body or church of Christ. As long as the apostles were able to attend and govern the few churches, gathered out of Jews and Greeks, they themselves filled the highest order of the church, and exercised the episcopal power. But James, instead of circulating to convert, confirm, and govern churches in different parts of the world, took up his residence in Jerusalem, and governed that diocess episcopally. As the number of churches increased; as the apostolic college was thinned by death; and as divisions arose in this or that church; the establishment of resident bishops became every where necessary, that the original institution and regular government might be preserved, and that the promise of Christ to be with his church to the end of the world, might be fulfilled in an ostensible succession of governors, filling the office of the apostles in every age, so far as all the intents and purposes of the spiritual society could be answered, after the ceasing of miracles and divine inspiration. Were it necessary to be proved, which it is not, that this spiritual society, like all others, must have some particular form of government, some subordination, and order, the practice of those churches, which have rashly renounced the sacred appointment of Christ and the Holy Ghost, would fully prove it, for they have been forced to invent a form of government for themselves, as far inferior to the old, as to every purpose of peace and charity, to say no more, as the inventions of men are to the ordinances of God.