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and lots, "settlements" as they called them, yet careful, in giving Thomas Davis "liberty to set up a saw mill," to insert the clause, "provided he shall let any one of the inhabitants have boards as cheap as others, and before strangers." As we have studied this lively picture of "The First Church in Newark," we have often wished that each of our old "First Churches" in the land might find a historian like-minded, to weave what remains of the past into a bright picture for the grateful study of the living, and the generations yet to come.

ARTICLE V.*

EXPLANATION OF ROMANS v. 12-19.

THAT there are peculiar difficulties attending the interpretation of this passage all will acknowledge. They are occasioned by the nature of the subject; the inversion of the Apostle's style; the peculiar figure of speech which he employs, occasioned by the sudden interruption of the course of thought at the end of verse 12; and perhaps we might add, by the amount of theorizing and conflicting commentary which have been lavished upon it.

Plainly the first step in order to understand the meaning of the passage is to ascertain its scope. It is admitted, that the apostle is treating of justification by faith, and that in writing this part, and indeed most of the argumentative part of the epistle, he has particularly the Jews and Jewish prejudices in view, and not the Gentiles, as in chap. xi. 13-36. The epistle

The Editors are not, in any degree, responsible for the opinions expressed in this Article. They have been pleased with the ingenuity shown in it, and recommend it as worthy the attention of all who would understand the Scriptures, but they are not prepared to endorse the interpretation itself, nor some of the opinions interwoven with it. They consider, however, that the Review is performing one of its highest functions, in presenting to the world interesting and original discussions as to the meaning of Scripture.-EDITORS.

is preeminently doctrinal; and it is evident, that many of the chief objections and arguments against Christianity, which the apostles encountered, had their origin in the corrupt Judaism then prevalent, and hence no small part of Paul's writings is devoted to a refutation of them. Indeed he not unfrequently answers them in his epistles, without formally stating them.

He had, in the preceding part of the epistle, fully exhibited the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ, in opposition to every legal scheme, and in the first part of chap. v. he shows the blessed effects of this plan of justification. In doing this, he mentions in verse 11, that Christians have obtained reconciliation with God through the Redeemer. This thought suggests to him a grand objection of the Jew to his docrine of justification by faith in Christ; and his design in verses 12-19 is to answer this objection, by comparing God's procedure in pronouncing sentence of condemnation upon Adam, involving as it did the condemnation of his posterity, with his procedure in justifying men by faith in Christ. The objection may be thus stated: Justice requires that God should justify men, each one according to his own works, and that he should not do it out of regard to another, but every man must stand on his own footing before God. How does Paul answer this? By reference to the well known case of Adam, as recorded in the Jew's own sacred books, where we learn, that according to God's arrangement, in consequence of Adam's sin, all men became sinners, and thus came under sentence of death and condemnation. This the Jew could not deny, and the apostle's argument is, that if the procedure in this case is not unjust, nor unworthy of the Almighty, then to justify men through faith in Christ, he being the cause or occasion of their justification, cannot be unjust; or, in other words, if to make one the occasion of condemnation to all is not unjust, much more to make one the occasion of justification to all, cannot be unjust.

What is more probable than that Paul, in his discussions with the advocates of Judaism, had frequently heard this objection made? Certainly he well knew that every Jew, who believed in justification by the works of the law, felt it, whether he expressed it or not; and, therefore, in regarding the pas

sage as an answer to this Jewish objection, there is nothing farfetched, or improbable, or obscure. The passage in this respect is precisely similar to many others in Paul's writings. In this same epistle, chap. ix. 6–13, there is a passage entirely parallel with this, as it respects the manner in which the apostle meets an objection of the Jew to this same doctrine of justification, by reference to a record in the Jewish scriptures of a similar procedure of God to that against which the objection is made. This objection, the apostle very concisely expresses in verse 6, which may be fully stated thus: Your doctrine of justification only by faith in Christ through grace, makes but a small part of the Jewish nation the children of God, which is contrary to God's promise made to Abraham. The apostle, to meet this, says, that all the Jews are not true Israelites to whom that promise pertained, and proceeds to show by cases cited from the Jewish scriptures, that God's procedure in choosing Isaac from the sons of Abraham, and Jaccb in preference to Esau, to enjoy the benefits of the theocracy, was precisely like his procedure in adopting men into his spiritual kingdom, without the least regard to their meritorious works. His argument is that if God's procedure in the first case was consistent with his promise to Abraham, so it must be in the latter also.

In the first part of the epistle to the Hebrews, he shows that Christ is superior to the angels and to Moses. Why does he show this? It may be answered, in order to confute the objection of the Jews to Christianity, that Judaism was instituted by superior and more glorious personages than Christianity; for whether the Jews formally stated this objection or not, it was implied in their continued preference of Judaism. The Jew felt it, if he did not express it. So, in the case before us, the Jew felt the objection to Paul's doctrine of justification, which, we believe, it is his design to answer in the passage under examination, for it is implied in his adherence to the system of justification by works.

The argument would then stand thus:

1. This appears to be the true scope of the passage, because it is congruous to the context.

2. It gives a clear and simple view as to real things, which

the apostle compares with each other. There appears to be, at first glance, a comparison of Adam with Christ, expressed by ros; and antitheses of different things, as the offence of Adam and the grace of Christ; this offence and the free gift; the disobedience of Adam and the obedience of Christ. Commentators, therefore, have disagreed much respecting what are the real objects compared here by the apostle; much obscurity has been thrown over the passage by representing that the comparison instituted in it is rather by way of an antithesis or contrast, than of direct resemblance, and that rúros expresses chiefly, not resemblance, but contrast.

Our view makes the plan of the Almighty in justifying sinners by faith in Christ, and that of bringing all men into a state of sin and death by the condemnation of Adam, the real objects of comparison, and this, we think, is brought to view in rusos, and repeated in all the apparently different antitheses contained in the passage; and thus all these are seen to harmonize with each other and to concur in illustrating the same thing; for it was the divine procedure which made Adam resemble the Redeemer, in each being the occasion of a change in the condition of the race, and so in regard to all the rest of these instances of contraposition.

3. This appears to be the true scope of the passage also, from the fact, that it shows why the apostle opposes apáμa and zápisua to each other, in verse 15. He has not only placed these in opposition to each other, but has continued to use terms corresponding with these, in the fore-clause and corresponding after-clause of his sentences, in the remainder of this verse, and in the following verses, so that we here find the following phases thus related to each other; (a), Tò TOù ivòs παράπτωμα, and ἡ χάρις τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ ἡ δωρεὰ; (3), εἰς ἁμαρτήσας, and τὸ δώρημα; (c), τὸ τοῦ ἑνὸς παράπτωμα, and οἱ την περισσείαν τῆς χάριτος * * * λαμβάνοντες. On the supposition that the apostle's chief design in this passage is to compare Adam with Christ; or Adam's offence with Christ's obedience; or the results of Adam's offence with the results of Christ's obedience, we are entirely at a loss how to account for this manner of writing. But if the divine procedure in the two cases thus placed in juxtaposition, is the

object of comparison, the one example of it with the other, then this way of writing appears very natural and plain, for To aapaarwμa, the offence, brings to view the case of Adam sinning, and according to the arrangement of the Most High, involving his posterity in condemnation, since this is a prominent thing in that case; and rò xápioμa, the gracious gift, brings to view the case of sinners being justified freely through the Saviour, according to the same divine arrangement, since this gift is a prominent thing in this case also.

4. In the same way also, our view accounts for the want of uniformity in the structure of the sentences in verse 15. “If through one, the many died, much more through one have the many found grace;" whereas uniformity requires that it should be, if through one the many died, much more through one shall the many live. But if the divine procedure in condemning men through Adam, is here compared with that in justifying men through Christ, this want of uniformity is natural; for grace abounding to the many represents the case of God's justifying men through Christ, quite as well, to say the least, as life being conferred upon the many would have done.

5. This scope appears to be the true one also, since it accounts so naturally for the great conciseness of the apostle's language in some parts of this passage, as compared with his fullness in other parts. This conciseness is obvious, and no less apparent is it, that in the verses 15-19 he has made four formal comparisons and two contrapositions, which plainly involve comparisons, and in all these he seems-as is truly the case to be comparing the same objects which he began to compare in verse 12. Now, why this copiousness of words in one respect, united with such conciseness? According to our view, the two cases which are here compared were familiar to the apostle's readers, and after being once mentioned needed only to be designated by the most concise terms in order to be readily understood by them, while the nature of his argument is such that the full presentation of it to the mind of his opponent required several repetitions of the comparison of the two cases of the divine procedure under consideration. Commentators have been at a loss to find what additional idea is expressed in verses 17, 19, but if we could discover nothing peculiar in

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