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for the purpose of extinguishing the light that was near and round about them. And some there were who took refuge from the conviction of sin, in the mazes of a sophistry, by which they tried to perplex both themselves and others out of the plainest intimations of conscience and common sense. There is no man of a fair and honest understanding, who, if not carried beyond his depth by the subtleties of a science falsely so called, does not yield his immediate consent, and with all the readiness he would do in a first principle, to the position that God is the rightful judge of His own creatures; and that it is altogether for Him to place the authority of a law over them, and to punish their violations; and that it is an unrighteous thing in us to set our will in opposition to His will, and a righteous thing in Him to avenge Himself of this disobedience. These are what any plain man will readily take up with, as being among the certainties of the Divine Government; and not till he bewilders himself by attempting to explain the secrecies of the Divine Government, will the impression of these certainties be at all deafened or effaced from the feelings of his moral nature. Now what the apostle appears to be employed about in this passage, is just to defend our moral nature against an invasion upon the authority of its clearest and most powerful suggestions. The antagonists against whom he here sets himself, feel themselves pursued by his allegations of their guilt; and try to make their escape from a reproachful

sense of their own sinfulness; and, for this purpose, would they ambitiously lift up the endeavours of their understanding towards the more high and unsearchable counsels of God. It is very true, that, however sinfully men may conduct themselves, He will get a glory to His own attributes from all His dealings with them. It is very true, that, like as the wrath of man shall be made to praise Him, so shall the worthlessness of man be made to redound to the honour of God's truth and of God's righteousness. Should even all men be liars, the veracity of God will be the more illustrated by its contrast with this surrounding evil, and by the fulfilment upon it of all His denunciations. The Holiness of the Divinity will blazen forth as it were into brighter conspicuousness, on the dark ground of human guilt and human turpitude. God manifests the dignity of His character, in His manifested abhorrence against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men. In the last day the glory of His power will be made known, when the Judge cometh in flaming fire to take vengeance on those who disobey Him; and even the very retribution which He deals forth on the heads of the rebellious, will be to Him the trophies of an awful and lofty vindication.

Now the objection reiterated in the various questions of this passage is, that if out of the unrighteousness of man, such a revenue as it were of fame and character shall accrue to the Deity-why should He be offended? Why should He inflict

so much severity on the sin, which after all serves to illustrate His own sacredness, and to exalt His own majesty? Why should He lay such a weight of guilt on those, who, it would appear, are to be the instruments of His glory? Is not sin, if not a good thing in itself, at least a good thing in its consequences, when it thus serves to swell the pomp of the Eternal, and throw a brighter radiance around His ways? And might not we then do this evil thing that the final and the resulting good may emerge out of it? And might not that sin, which we have been taught to shun as dishonouring to God, be therefore chosen on the very opposite principle, of doing that which will ultimately bring a reversion of honour to His character, and of credit and triumph to all His adminis

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One would have thought, that the obvious answer to all this sophistry, was, that if you take away from God the prerogative of judging and condemning and inflicting vengeance, you take from Him all the ultimate glory which He ever can derive, from the sinfulness of His own creatures-that the very way in which the presence of sin sets forth the sacredness of the Deity, is by the abhorrence that He manifests towards it-that the righteousness of man commendeth the righteousness of God, only by God dealing with this unrighteousness, in the capacity of a judge and of a lawgiver that if you strip Him of the power of punishment, you strip Him of the power of ren

dering such a vindication of His attributes, as will make Him venerable and holy in the eyes of His own subjects-that, in fact, there remains no possibility of God fetching any triumph to Himself, from the rebelliousness of His creatures, if He cannot proceed in the work of moral government against their rebellion. And thus, if God may not find fault, and if His judicial administration of the world is to be overthrown, there will none of that glory come to Him out of human sinfulness, which the gainsayer of our text pleads in mitigation of human sinfulness.

This Paul might have said. But it is instructive to perceive, that, instead of this, he satisfies himself with simply affirming the first principles of the question. He counts it enough barely to state, that if there was anything in the reasoning of his opponent, then God's right of judging the world would be taken away. He holds this to be a full condemnation of the whole sophistry, that, if it were admitted, how then could God judge the world? With the announcement of what is plain to a man of plain understanding, does he silence. an argument which can only proceed from a man of subtle understanding. And in reply to the maxim, let us do evil that good may come,' he enters into no depths of jurisprudence or moral argumentation upon the subject; but simply affirms that the condemnation of all who should do so were a righteous condemnation.

It is not for us to enter on the philosophy of

any subject, upon which Paul does not enter. But we may at least remark, that this treatment of his adversaries by the apostle is consonant with the soundest maxims of philosophy. We know not a better way of characterizing the spirit of that sound and humble and sober philosophy, which has conducted the human mind to its best acquisitions on the field of natural truth, than simply to say of it, that it ever prefers the certainty of experience, to the visions of a conjectural imagination that it cautiously keeps within the line which separates the known from the unknown, and would never suffer a suspicion fetched from the latter region, to militate against a plain certainty that stands clearly and obviously before it on the former region. And when it carries its attention from natural to moral science, it never will consent to a principle of sure and authoritative guidance for the heart and conduct of man in the present time, to be subverted by any difficulty drawn from a theme so inaccessible as the unrevealed purposes of God, or from a field of contemplation so remote, as the glories which are eventually to redound to the character of God at the final winding up of His administration.

It is not for man to hold at abeyance the prompt decisions of moral sense, till he make out an adjustment between them and such endless fancies. as may be conjured up from the gulphs of misty and metaphysical speculation. Both piety and philosophy lend their concurrence to the truth,