Of St. Paul's thanksgiving in ver. 25.

399

IX.

where, I ask, has the Harmonist ever said that the 'thanks- SECT. giving' in ver. 25, may be applied to an unregenerate person? I give the reader my words: "The Apostle adds, in p. 111. the twenty-fourth verse, an exclamation or expression of misery suited to the man whom he had been describing in the preceding verses: shewing his miserable, and, if you regard the law, actually deplorable condition. And then in ver. 25, he sets forth the grace of God through Christ, by which alone he himself had been delivered from this most wretched state, and a way of deliverance had been made and thrown open to others: which 'thanksgiving' is to be read in a parenthesis."

I say here indeed, that this expression of woe, ver. 24, applies to the man whom St. Paul had been describing in the former verses: but that the 'thanksgiving' in ver. 25 must be read in a parenthesis and referred to the person of St. Paul. After this wandering, Dr. Tully at last proceeds to the argument in favour of my opinion, taken from the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth verses, and which I had called most incontrovertible. It assumes the following form: "The state of the person described in this chapter is a state p. 111. of misery, a state of sin and death, a state, in short, from which whomsoever are Christ's are delivered: the state of the regenerate is not of such a kind: therefore the state of the regenerate is not the state of the person described in this chapter." In answer to this, Dr. Tully in the first place turns it into ridicule, as usual: and then briefly replies, Diss. p. 32, 33. that "the whole argument is nothing else but begging the question." But is it not most plainly confirmed by St. Paul's words in the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth verses? Surely it is. For the person described in the former verses, is in the twenty-fourth called by St. Paul 'a wretched miserable man,' and is said to be subject to 'the body of death,' that is, the dominion of sin, and so to death. In the twenty-fifth verse, the grace of God through Christ is extolled, by which alone man can obtain deliverance from this misery and body of death. What can be plainer? But Dr. Tully goes on: "Will he deny then, that he himself is a sinner, and wretched on this very account, and that in the state in which he is, he daily, nay hourly, deserves death?"

400

The regenerate not called wretched, &c.

SECT. He concludes, "In this at least let him have regard to his IX. own modesty." I answer: I willingly confess before God

and men, that I was once a most grievous sinner, and therefore most miserable: and I acknowledge, that even now, I offend in many things: but I trust that by the grace of God, without arrogance, I can deny that I am a sinner in the sense that the word is used in Scripture, or that I am under the body of death, of which the Apostle speaks, and therefore miserable. But whatever I may be, (and I wish that the reverend gentleman would allow me to stand or fall to my own master,) I altogether deny that a regenerate or truly religious person is ever called in Scripture a wretched' or miserable man,' not to say miserable because he is subject to the body of death of which the Apostle speaks. Let Dr. Tully produce a passage of this kind from Holy Scripture, if he can. But on the contrary, the whole of Scripture, be it prophetical, evangelical, or apostolical, every where declares such a man to be blessed and happy. Moreover, however Dr. Tully may despise my argument, I know of a most learned man who for some time kept most tenaciously to the erroneous interpretation of this passage, but afterwards, convinced by a more serious consideration of this one argument, yielded to the truth. This was Nicolas

Zitinius, who having taken upon himself, at the desire of his friends, the task of explaining this seventh chapter according to their supposition who think that from the fourteenth verse of it, St. Paul speaks of himself as regenerate, and having earnestly applied himself to the undertaking, when at length he came to the words, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord," stopped like one astounded and presently coming to himself broke out in the following words: "But where is this deliverance? where this blessing for which the Apostle so thanks God? was it that it was necessary for him to be kept in such slavery to sin? That cannot be proved to me in any way: and therefore I equally thank the Father of lights for vouchsafing the light of His truth to shine upon me, in being delivered from so great an error." Would that Dr. Tully would imitate his example.

Parenthesis in ver. 25. explained.

401

IX.

Diss. p. 34.

§ 27. Dr. Tully again inveighs against what I had said SECT. touching the necessity of reading the words, 'I thank God,' &c. in a parenthesis, as if spoken by the Apostle in his own person. He had before spoken of this parenthesis of mine as being extraordinary. But why is it extraordinary for the Apostle, after describing the wretched condition of man under the law, to shew by a few words enclosed in a short parenthesis, that this description did not apply to himself, and moreover, to cut off any opening for despair in this wretched man by shewing that his condition was not altogether deplorable, but that a sure remedy was at hand, if only he would embrace the grace of Christ: and that he then should return to his original purpose in the twentysixth verse, and sum up very briefly the whole of his preceding discourse? Should this appear so absurd, as to be obliged, besides attributing to the Apostle an irrelevant and really absurd argument, (such as we have proved Dr. Tully to do,) to distort the phrases used by the Apostle, from the fourteenth to the twenty-fifth verse, into a meaning totally at variance with their accustomed sense throughout the whole of Scripture? But there is not wanting a similar example of a parenthesis being used by St. Paul in a like change of person, and that too in this same Epistle: the passage is in the third chapter, where in the fifth verse St. Paul ver. 5, 6, 7. speaking in the character of the Jews, (according to the agreement of the most learned interpreters,) says, "But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous, Who taketh vengeance ?" And then in a parenthesis, he says in his own person, "I speak as a man," &c. He then returns to the objection brought forward, and again assumes the person of the unbelieving Jews, ver. 7. "For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto His glory," &c. The reader may refer to Grotius on this passage.

§ 28. In the last place, Dr. Tully is displeased, because in my answer to the last objection of Paræus I said by the way that it was not necessary to render the words avròs èyà, in ver. 26, 'I myself:' since they might be better expressed by 'I that man.' This also appears to him extraordinary: but ille ego why? is it wonderful or new for the Apostle to say, as if in

SECT. his own person, by using the pronoun I, that which does IX. not refer to himself but to others? I have clearly shewn

(whatever Dr. Tully may say to the contrary) that the Apostle uses this change of person in other places: and even in this very chapter, ver. 9, unless we wish to do violence to the Apostle's words. Does he think it wonderful that I should render avròs by 'that one?' even beginners in the Greek language, know that this use of this word is quite common. Whence before Hugo Grotius, James Capel, who certainly was not ignorant of Greek, and who in other respects agreed with Dr. Tully's interpretation, thus paraphrased the Apostle's words, 'So then I myself,' &c. "I thank God because I that man, who was by nature the servant of sin," &c. There are some who render the words by 'I the same man,' as if the Apostle said, 'I, one and the same person, with the mind serve the law of God; but with the flesh, the law of sin:' which version agrees very well with our view of the question. So Erasmus, Bucer, Hammond, and long before them, the Arabian interpreter. But the fortunes of Greece do not depend on this. Nor is it necessary, as the Doctor himself acknowledges, to pursue this point of grammar farther, if only we have proved by some arguments taken from the subject itself, that the Apostle, from the fourteenth verse of this chapter, is describing a man under the law and destitute of the grace of the Gospel. "Of this," (to close my Apology with Dr. Tully's own words,) "let honest and thoughtful readers judge."

INDEX.

Anabaptists, condemned by Augsburg Auròs yw, how rendered in Latin, 402.