EPISTOLA AD ROMANOS

• 469A

The Romans are of a region of Italy. These had been forestalled by false apostles, and under the name of our Lord Jesus Christ had been led into the law and the prophets. These 469Bthe Apostle calls back to the true evangelical faith, writing to them from Corinth.

VERSE 1.-- Paul. (BED.) On the Acts of the Apostles he says that Paul came to the faith in the second year after the passion and resurrection of Christ, etc., as far as he set out to the teaching office of the Gentiles according to the agreement of the apostles.

(AUG. lib. de Spiritu et litt., c. 7). He chose this name for no other reason, etc., as far as Saul is interpreted disquiet and temptation.

(AMB.) Further, he is said to have done this after the manner of the holy apostles, who, advancing in virtues, 469Cwere called by a changed name, that by the very name also they might be new, as also Cephas and the sons of thunder.

(HIER. Com. in Ep. ad Philem.) Paul took this name to himself from the first spoil which he brought to the Church, namely from Sergius Paulus the proconsul, whom he converted in Cyprus.

A servant. Out of a servant and a lowly man God made an apostle and a lofty one; so be you also lowly: For he that humbleth himself shall be exalted (Luc.XIV).

(AUG.) By setting down both, he testifies that the person of God and man is one. The one he sets down for the Jews, the other for the Gentiles. For "Christ": this name is known to the Jews, by which name they see the Son of God designated, and hear him promised in the law; and though thou shouldst preach another to them, they would not believe. But to the Gentiles, 469Dbecause they had not read of it in anything, he sets the Saviour first, that is, Jesus. "Christ," although it is not a proper name but a name of the sacrament, like "prophet" and "priest," is nevertheless rightly set first, being known to the Jews: even though these names were bestowed upon many, yet they were only a figure; for he alone is the true King and Priest.

Called. Not by himself, but by God; or "called," named by men by the privilege of the name. An apostle. Behold, from a lowly man a lofty one. Separated. From the doctrine of the scribes and Pharisees: this against the Jews; or, from the other apostles, in body and not in mind, whence: Separate 470Aunto me Barnabas and Paul for the work whereunto I have taken them (Act. XIII). [Vulg. Acts 13:2 Saulum, "Saul," where Migne prints Paulum.]

The gospel. (HAYM.) It is a good announcement, etc. Of God. Not devised by man.

470BVERSE 2.-- Whatever Walafrid expressed in this his Gloss out of the exposition of the Epistles of Paul by Haymo, bishop of Halberstadt, let the reader seek among the works of that same Haymo in the Patrologia, vols. CXVI, CXVII and CXVIII. Edit. Which before its fulfilment: it did not come as something sudden, but as something promised long before. Whence in this the word is true: Because one is he that soweth, and another he that reapeth.

VERSE 3.-- Who was made unto him. Who was made according to the flesh, by the work of the Holy Spirit from a virgin, that is, born. The impiety of the heretics is met, who, understanding this chapter with a blunted heart, take Christ to be only a man. Therefore by adding according to the flesh, he reserved to the divinity its own dignity, in which Christ is the Word of God, through whom all things were made.

(AUG.) Who was, etc., as far as that he might fittingly appear to carnal men, clothed.

(ID. Expos. in hanc epist.) Christ therefore is one person of a twofold substance; nor yet can God and 470Cman be called a part of this person: otherwise the Son of God, before he took the form of a servant, was not whole, and grew when the man was added to his divinity.

VERSE 4.-- Who was predestined. (AUG., Tract. 105 in Joan.) Predestined was that so great and so lofty and supreme raising up of human nature, that it had nothing higher to which it might be lifted: just as for us the divinity itself had nothing lowlier to which it might lay itself down, than the assumed nature of man with the infirmity of the flesh even unto the death of the cross.

(AUG., lib. I de Praedest. sanct., c. 15.) The most illustrious light also of predestination and of grace is the mediator himself of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, etc., as far as that he who was to be according to the flesh the son of David, might be in power the Son of God.

470DOf the dead, of Jesus Christ. "Of Christ" for "of him" or "of his own": he has set a proper name in place of a pronoun after the Hebrew manner, a way of speaking most usual in the Scriptures, especially the older ones, as: Moses did as the Lord commanded Moses.

(CHRYS.) That is, we did not furnish this by our own power, that we are apostles, nor indeed did we obtain this dignity by our many sweats and labours, but we found grace.

VERSE 5.-- Among all the nations. Not to the Jews only, with whom (because they were called without the law) they ought not 471Ato act under the law. For his name. For his glory, not for ours, as you do.

VERSE 6.-- The called of Jesus Christ. That is, by him, namely by Jesus Christ. A genitive for an ablative, after the Greek manner.

VERSE 7.-- To the called saints. They were not called for this reason, that they were holy, but were made holy for this reason, that they were called; and called for this reason, that they were beloved.

VERSE 8.-- I give thanks. To give thanks is to perceive that all things have been given by God, and for that to praise him with heart, voice and deed.

To my God. (AUG., lib. de Ovibus.) For this utterance can belong to none but the saints, whose God he is called, as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. For although he is by nature the one God of all, yet he is said to be theirs properly 471Bby grace, who by the merit of faith and of justice are proved to be his worshippers.

For you all. While for others, first for you, from whom great profit comes through Christ the mediator, through whom God has given you all good things.

Because your faith. (AMBR.) He rejoices with them over their good beginning, whereby he shows his charity toward them, and exhorts them to advance. And he says that he does all these things because their faith profits many.

VERSE 9.-- A witness. That you have faith I impute to the Lord. For I pray to him for what is to be had; or he sets forth when he gives thanks, namely in prayers; how? without ceasing.

VERSE 11.-- For I long. That what he could not urge 471Cby words, being present he might urge by the power of miracles.

VERSE 12.-- To be comforted. Just now I am desolate, as you also are: even if you do not perceive it, but thus, we should be comforted.

VERSE 13.-- Brethren. Because they are reborn, and some upright; see above: To the called saints.

VERSE 14.-- To the Greeks. Of the Jews he is silent, because he is the teacher of the Gentiles. To the Greeks. He puts the Greeks first, because from them all worldly philosophy took its beginning. To the barbarians. He calls barbarians those who are as it were outside the law, namely those who are neither Hebrews, nor Greeks, nor Latins. To none is this preaching more especially owed. A debtor, because he was sent to all.

VERSE 16.-- For it is the power of God, etc. Because by signs the 471Dincredible preaching is confirmed: which is not the case among false heralds.

VERSE 17.-- For the justice of God. (AMBR.) It is that which freely justifies the ungodly through faith without the works of the law, etc., as far as who deny that this is the Christ whom God promised. Is revealed. (AUG.) He approaches the Gentiles according to their former state, etc., as far as that, puffed up of themselves, they fell into idols. From faith, etc., (AMBR.) of God who promises, unto the faith of the man who believes him, etc., as far as unto the faith of realities and of sight.

(AUG.) Faith is that by which those things are believed which are not seen, etc., as far as unto the faith of realities by which we shall obtain the things believed.

As it is written. In Habakkuk (cap. II) it stands thus: 472ABut the just shall live by his own faith. But this and many more such testimonies which he sets down seem to disagree with the translation of the Hebrew verity which we now use: because sometimes he takes from the LXX interpreters, sometimes, as speaking by the same Spirit as the prophets, he takes the sense only, using his own words and his own arrangement.

VERSE 18.-- Upon all ungodliness. Ungodliness is to have sinned against God, iniquity against men; or the ungodly man is the unbeliever, like an idolater; the iniquitous man is he who by the depravity of his work departs from equity. Of those who the truth. As if he should say: Why is there wrath upon them for ungodliness, since they have not known God? To which he answers: They were indeed able to know, but they themselves are unwilling, preferring to abide unjustly in their own pleasure. They hold back the truth of God. 472BBecause, as it is said, that which is knowable of God is in them; as if he should say: they have in themselves whereby they may know, namely natural reason. They hold it back in injustice. Good is that which they hold, but evil is where they hold it; for they hold the truth, but in iniquity. Hast thou found God? thou hast found the truth, and holding him back in injustice; even what thou hast known through the works of God, thou hast lost through the works of man.

VERSE 19.-- That which is known of God. (GREG., lib. X Moral., c. 4.) Known is that which we can attain from the disposition of this world and from the natural order. But unknown of God is that which lies hid from every creature: as the account of his substance or of his nature, and the mystery of man's deliverance.

It is manifest in them. (AUG.) Because not only did 472Cnatural reason avail for this, but God also helped daily, lest nature alone should seem to suffice.

VERSE 20.-- From the creature. (GREG., lib. XXIX Moral., c. 8.) From man by excellence, because he excels among the other creatures, or because of the agreement which he has with all creatures: for he is locally in a place with bodies, he feels with the animals, he understands with the angels; whence: Preach the gospel to every creature (Marc. XVI).

When they had known, etc. (AUG., Serm. LV de Verb. Dom.) They saw whither they must come, etc., as far as for what God had given freely, he took away from the ungrateful.

VERSE 21.-- Darkened. (AMBR.) For a cloud of error covered their heart, because, whereas they ought to have honoured the Creator the more from those beautiful things 472Dwhich he made, they were blunted, having forsaken him.

VERSE 22.-- They were made fools. Behold how the heart was darkened, which is the punishment: wise in the natures of things, foolish in God.

VERSE 23.-- And they changed. (AUG., epist. CXIX, c. 6, ad Januarium.) Here he condemns the images of the ungodly. Some worshipped the earth, others the sun and things of this kind.

Into the likeness of an image. He heightens the folly, to show the full measure of their dullness.

Of a man and of birds, etc. It was the custom of the Romans from of old to adore the images of men, as of Romulus, of Jove, and of others, chiefly from the coming of Aeneas into Italy. But of birds and of four-footed beasts and of serpents, 473Afrom the time when Alexandria was conquered by Augustus and subjugated to Rome.

(AMBR.) For the Babylonians first called the figment of Bel a god, etc., as far as and birds, because the pagans hold raven-rites sacred.

(AUG., lib. VII de Civit. Dei, c. 33.) Through this one and true religion (of Christ), it could be laid open that the gods of the nations are most unclean demons, desiring to be thought gods under the occasions of departed souls or under the appearance of worldly creatures.

VERSE 24.-- He delivered them up, etc. (AUG., lib. de Grat. et libero arbit., c. 21.) It is manifest that God works in the hearts of men, to bend their wills, whether to good things, according to his mercy, or to evil things, according to their deserts, by his own judgment assuredly, sometimes 473Bhidden, sometimes open, but always just.

That they may afflict. (GREG., Homil. 11 in Ezech.) A sin which is not washed away by the lamentation of penitence, etc., as far as God permits that the blinded mind should slide into others also.

VERSE 25.-- Because they exchanged. He pursues at greater length, part by part, the fault and the punishment, that he may match them. Because they exchanged. He shows part by part that they changed the glory of God, namely that they thought him God who was not, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator. And he pursues the parts of the uncleanness, that women into women, males into males: in which he matches the punishment to the fault, that as they sinned against the creating nature, 473Cso they might be punished in their own nature; whence he concludes: And the recompense.

They exchanged the truth. (AMBR.) The name of God, who is true, they gave to those who are not gods.

(AUG.) The truth of the creature is from God, but is not God, and this they turned into a lie, worshipping creatures as the Creator.

And they worshipped, etc. But lest they should say, I do not worship the images, but the things they stand for, such as the sun, he adds: And they served the creature. Here he condemns the things which they understood in the images. Amen. As if he should say: It is true, that to the true God is blessing unto the ages: but to the gods of the nations ungodliness gives honour for a time. Therefore what they say is falsehood.

VERSE 26.-- Passions. That is, pleasures which, although 473Dthey delight, are nevertheless passions, of a nature not to be named.

The natural use. (AUG., lib. III cont. Jul. Pelag., c. 20.) Dost thou think, Julian, that the Apostle has from this praised lust, etc., as far as it is against nature and shameful.

VERSE 27.-- And the recompense, etc. (AUG.) But few see these punishments, etc., as far as they are both sins and punishments. It behoved. Here the cause for which they were delivered up is shown without any ambiguity.

VERSE 28.-- And as, etc. Again, because they do not yet come to their senses, they fall into other things for the same fault. By as, he likens the punishment to the sin, in that as they sinned in the knowledge of God, so they were punished in their own understanding. They did not approve. Because they did not know how to hold God in their acknowledgment, 474Awhich reason approved: or because they thought that God did not know and neglected evils. He delivered up, etc.

VERSE 29.-- With all iniquity. He enumerates the parts, that he may accuse malice more openly, when someone contrives harm to another. Wickedness is rashness, when one dares what he cannot do, or want of self-restraint. Contention is the assailing of truth by the boldness of shouting. Malignity is an evil will, when it can go no further, or the not returning of thanks for benefits. Detractors: who deny the good things of others, or pervert them.

Hateful to God. Lest whispering or detraction be thought a light thing, because they consist in words, he adds concerning them: Hateful to God, that they may understand that by whispering and detraction alone they can incur eternal damnation. The haughty. The haughty are those who are unwilling to endure a superior, or an equal.

474BVERSE 31.-- Disordered. Disorder of the body indicates the quality of the mind.

VERSE 32.-- They are worthy of death. Lest they be thought to be afflicted only with those punishments in which they take delight, he adds the last, eternal death. Who consent to them that do them, etc. To consent is to keep silence when thou couldst reprove; or to foster error.

VERSE 1.-- Wherefore, etc. This is said in common of the Gentiles and of the Jews. The Jew used to judge the Gentile, on account of his former state; the Gentile the Jew: each of them a man, not a spirit. If the Jew judges the Gentile for idolatry, he too is an idolater. If the Gentile judges the Jew for transgression of the law, he too is a transgressor of the natural law. 474CInexcusable. Because thou thyself art the witness of thy own damnation, while thou judgest another: why so? because thou doest the same things. Thou who judgest. Wherein he shows himself to be what he is not, that is, just. For thou doest the same things. The Apostle destroys by his own authority the empty excuse of the Gentiles and of the Jews: for the Jew might allege as the excuse of his sin, Though I do the same things, yet my race and the law defend me who am a Jew, and ignorance me who am a Gentile. Against this the Apostle, Thou who judgest, etc.

(THEOD.) It is moreover manifest to those who are wise, that they who bear themselves unjustly are punished by the divine sentence.

VERSE 3.-- But dost thou reckon. This chapter is commonly read against the Jews and the Gentiles; yet it can also be read specially against any haughty 474Dprelate of the Church. That thou shalt escape. Thou sinnest the more grievously while thou promisest thyself impunity: because thou despisest the goodness of God, and knowest not that thou despisest it, and dost this? A rebuke, as though he should say: It is a marvel.

VERSE 4.-- Or the riches of his goodness. (AMBR.) Copious is the goodness which gives many things and to many, etc., as far as but turns it to impunity.

VERSE 5.-- But according to. For there are some to whom the evils they do are displeasing, and, led by repentance of heart, they labour, so far as it is given them, to come out of them: of whom he does not here speak. There are others to whom evils are pleasing, and who, presuming too much upon the mercy of God, stubbornly persist in them, wherein they show his patience and heap up their own burden by sinning the worse. 475AAnd there are others to whom evils are indeed displeasing, but since they understand them to be grievous, they think that they can no longer be pardoned, like him who said: My iniquity is greater (Gen. IV), etc. Those therefore by excessive hope deem God not just; but these by despair reckon God not good. From both, then, they shall be imperilled, and both by hoping and by despairing, labouring under contrary things and contrary affections, they shall perish.

Of the just judgment. (CYPR.) He said that the judgment of God is just, etc., as far as penitence cannot profit the sinner.

VERSE 6.-- Who will render to every man. Who now does not render to those whom he sets free, since toward the unjust his goodness is now bountiful. But in the time to come he will render evil for evil, since he is just; good for evil, since he is 475Bgood and just. Only he will not render evil for good, since he is not unjust.

(GREG.) It belongs to justice that they should never lack punishment, whose mind, etc., as far as that a man be punished eternally.

VERSE 8.-- Indignation. Lest he should seem to be angry and not to take vengeance: whence tribulation and anguish.

VERSE 9.-- Tribulation and anguish. Meanwhile in the soul alone before the judgment, but after the judgment wrath and indignation. Upon every. What above was indefinite, there: But to those who, is here universal, that it may include the Jew and the Gentile. He says soul, because in the unbeliever it is the soul that acts, for whose faithlessness it shall be straitened with spiritual punishment.

Of the Jew first. (AMBR.) He always sets the Jew first: because as the believer is the more honourable on account of 475CAbraham, so the unbeliever is to be dealt with the worse, because he refused what was promised to the fathers.

VERSE 11.-- For there is not, etc. He makes the Jew and the Gentile equal in punishment and in glory: because God judges not according to persons, but according to merits; because he condemns both according to the measure of the sin.

(AMBR.) God does not follow the prerogative of race, so as to receive the unbelieving for the fathers' sake, or to cast from himself the believing because of the unworthiness of his parents, but he either rewards or condemns each one by his own merit.

VERSE 12.-- Without the law. (AUG.) The Apostle called the Gentiles without law for this reason, that they had not received the written law of Moses, which the Jews boasted that they had received.

In the law. (ID.) From those who have known the divine commandments the excuse is taken away, 475Detc., as far as or by the addition of their own will.

They shall be judged. Not that they should be saved as it were through fire, as some say, but they shall utterly perish. For Christ says that it shall be more tolerable for Sodom in the judgment than for the Jews who do not believe in Christ. And again he says that they shall not have an excuse for the sin of unbelief, because he came and spoke to them: of which those have an excuse to whom he spoke neither through himself nor through his own, who nevertheless shall not escape damnation: because they who without the law, etc. Yet they shall suffer lighter things, because from him to whom more is committed, more is required.

VERSE 13.-- For not the hearers. Does the law alone sulvat? No, because it does not make men just, and this is: For not 476Afor the hearing, but the doers, whosoever they be, which indeed is through grace. But the doers, that is, those who believe in Christ, whom the law promised, whosoever they be, which is not except through grace.

(AUG., lib. de Spir. et lit., c. 26.) The doers of the law shall be justified, that is, shall be accounted just, or shall be made just, not those who were doers before shall be justified, since the Gentiles also.

VERSE 14.-- For when, etc. Above he had said that the Gentile is condemned if he should work evil, and saved if well: but since he has not the law, as though he did not know what is good or what is evil, it seems that neither ought to be imputed to him. Against this the Apostle: although he has not the written law, yet he has the natural, by which he understands and is conscious to himself what is good and what is evil; 476Bfor vice is against nature, and grace assuredly heals it. For the image in the human soul has not been so far worn away by the stain of earthly affections that no lineaments have remained in it. That which was there impressed through the image of God, when man was created, has not been altogether blotted out. Accordingly, when the vice has been healed by grace, those things which are of the law are done naturally. Not that grace is denied through nature, but rather that nature is repaired through grace: by which grace, in the inner man renewed, the law of justice is written again, which fault had blotted out.

VERSE 15.-- The work of the law. It is faith, which they have of their own accord in their hearts, that is, in their inmost affection, where faith works through love.

VERSE 17.-- But if thou, etc. Here he attacks the Jews, 476Caccusing them the more grievously of their sins, in that they had more helps.

VERSE 19.-- To be ten. He calls the Gentiles blind and abiding in darkness, who, being deprived also of reason, are blind; and if they know anything, yet they are in darkness.

VERSE 20.-- Having the form. That thou mayest be to others an example of the knowledge of the law and of the truth. For some have the knowledge and understanding of a book and perceive it as the author himself perceived it, yet they have not the truth from it: because they know not how it is true, nor even that it is true. But the Jew boasts that he has the sense of the law, and knows that that sense of the law is true, so that he is a model to others who wish to know.

VERSE 24.-- For the name of God. Among the Gentiles the name of God is blasphemed through the Jews: because the Jews strove to persuade 476Dbelievers that Christ ought not to be called God. Or because of old the Gentiles did not notice that the Jews had been delivered over to them for their own offences, but gave the glory of their victory to their idols, as though they had conquered the God of the Jews in the Jews.

VERSE 25.-- Circumcision indeed. He showed above that the law does not help them, and now that circumcision does not help toward obtaining justice. It profiteth, if the law, etc. Because by obeying God he makes a sign of the truth, while an untaught people is kept under the fear of God.

It profiteth. It is asked: how does he here say that circumcision profits, when in what follows he says: If you be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing? The answer is: he would have this 477Aunderstood according to the state of the different times. For according to the state of the old law circumcision once profited, but it did not profit unto salvation without the spiritual observance of the law, of which he speaks here. But now, that is, in the time of grace, after the truth has been shown forth, not only does it not profit, but it even harms, of which he speaks in what follows.

VERSE 26.-- Is it not. The Gentile by comparison with himself shows thee, O Jew, worthy of damnation, thou who hast known not by nature, nor by circumcision, but by the law, that which he [knows] by nature, that is, Christ?

VERSE 27.-- He shall judge, etc. (ORIG.) Circumcision is in the flesh. To circumcise is from the generative member, etc., as far as in whom there is not the circumcision of the flesh, but the observance of the law.

VERSE 28.-- For not. As if to say: a Gentile can well become 477Ba Jew, and a Jew a Gentile, as has been said. A Jew. It is interpreted one confessing: for he who truly believes and rightly confesses is truly a Jew.

VERSE 29.-- The circumcision of the heart. (ORIG.) It is that which purifies the soul, and cuts away the stains of vices.

Whose praise. (AMBR.) God praises the believer, etc., as far as which appeared before men in the work.

Not of men. (AUG.) But he calls it the circumcision of the heart, namely a will pure from all unlawful concupiscence: which is not brought about by the letter teaching and threatening, but by the Spirit helping and healing.

VERSE 1.-- What then more. He objects to himself what he sees can be objected, that he may resolve it. Since a Jew becomes a Gentile, and conversely. What then is there more for the Jew, 477Cwho is called God's peculiar people, than for the Gentile who is called an unclean dog? or what has he gained from circumcision? To this he answers: It availed indeed of old, but they are not on that account more worthy in the faith; and this is: There is much more for the Jew according to his former state than for the Gentile, and this in every way. Every way is either in the administration of temporal things, or in the unlocking of spiritual things; and in both of these God did many things for the Jews which he did not for the Gentiles: and so according to their former state they were more worthy.

VERSE 2.-- First indeed, etc. As if: That I may pass over other lesser matters concerning temporal things, I set this first and chief, that the oracles of the Lord, that is, the law and the prophets, were entrusted to them as to friends: through which they might understand the redemption to come. But thou wilt say: 477DNothing more was on that account done for them, because they did not believe the oracles, so that some of them should receive the promised Christ. To which it is answered: Yet it did not on that account profit believers less; and this is: For although some did not believe, yet faith has not on that account been made void.

VERSE 3.-- Shall their unbelief. (AMBR.) Not, he says, because some were unwilling to believe, shall it be prejudicial to the rest of the Jews, so that they be said unworthy to receive what God promised to the faithful, since indeed the promise was so made that it should profit believers.

Faith. (ORIG.) We understand it to be that which God has with those to whom he entrusts his own oracles, or that by which some believe God.

478AVERSE 4.-- But every. He adds this, that it may appear that the promise of God was made and fulfilled, not on account of any worthiness of man, but on account of mercy: that grace may be given to the unworthy, and that grace may be the more commendable. But God is called truthful, that is, unchangeable, both in essence and in promise. Man a liar, that is, not having even the true being of nature, and flowing away through sins.

Every man a liar. Who denies that God has fulfilled his promises: this above all the Jew, whom God overcomes when he gives what he promised.

Every man. The Jew also, lest he seem more worthy in the new state than the Gentile.

VERSE 5.-- But if our iniquity. He said that God is truthful and every man a liar, and that he gives good things 478Bto the unworthy, wherein his justice and grace appear the more commendable: whence the carnal man, saying that God uses evils as an instrument for his own glory, brings the matter to this, that he calls God unjust who punishes sins which profit him. This he removes, saying:

Is God unjust. God is truthful and man a liar. But if this is so, and thus our iniquity commends the justice of God, what seems to follow? That God is unjust. But is God unjust who brings evils?

VERSE 7.-- For if the truth. The removal of God's injustice having been interposed, the Apostle returns to the proof of the carnal man striving to prove that God is unjust if he punishes the wicked, because if he is thereby the more glorious: why am I even now, and not only in the time to come, judged as a sinner, which I am not? Or: Still, that is, after conversion, 478Cafter he gave gifts to one unworthy. For when before I deserved ill by my own doings, he was not the more glorious: as if he should say: What could be seen before remission ought not to be seen after, namely that I am to be judged a sinner; as if he should say: It is certain that the truth of forgiving would not have abounded unto glory unless I had sinned.

VERSE 8.-- And not as. As if: And if thou art that, that the truth of God abounds in sin, why. do we not do evils that good things may come, as it is laid to our charge that we think this (which is blasphemy) and even preach it, on the occasion of words of this kind: where sin abounded, grace did more abound?

Or: Let it be joined more closely with the preceding letter than before. As if: How shall God judge? As if: Not rightly, because he would not even now justly judge me as 478Da sinner, which I am not, and truly not.

VERSE 9.-- What then. As if: He did more for the Jew in the former state; and, because he fulfilled good things for them not out of any merit of theirs. What then? do we excel them? Truly, since every man is a liar; therefore we Jews do not excel the Gentiles in this state of grace, although we were more excellent in the former state in every way.

By no means. Because there is no respect of persons with God, but in every nation he that feareth God is acceptable to him (Act. X).

VERSE 11.-- There is none that seeketh. From his works they were able to seek and to find that Christ was God.

479AVERSE 12.-- All have turned aside, etc. He does not mean the whole people utterly, but one part of the people. For there are always two peoples in one people: whence Jeremiah: Then all rose up against the prophet of the Lord, wishing to kill him. And he added: But all the people did not permit them (Jer. XXXVIII). He said that all rose up, that is, the wicked; that all the people did not permit it, namely the good.

There is none, even to one. For Christ alone does good in himself and in his own.

VERSE 15.-- Their feet are swift. Of whom the Lord says: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets (Matth. XXIII). And again: An evil and adulterous generation (Ibid. XVI). And of whom Isaiah says: Woe to the sinful nation, to the wicked seed (Isa. I), etc.

479BVERSE 16.-- Destruction. They do such things as bring them to be crushed in this world, through Titus and Vespasian, and in the world to come they shall be unhappy, punished in soul and body.

VERSE 19.-- In the law. The Old Testament is sometimes called the law generally, as there: The Lord opened the understanding of the disciples, that they might understand concerning him the things that were written in the law and the prophets and the psalms (Luc. XXIV; Joan. X; Psal. LXXXI). Sometimes the psalms are called the law. As the Lord says: It is written in your law. I said: You are gods and all of you sons of the Most High And elsewhere: That the word may be fulfilled which is written in their law: Because they hated me without cause (Joan. XV; Psal. XXXIV). That every mouth may be stopped, even that of the Jews 479Cboasting from their own glory that they came to the faith for their own merits; or let the mouth of the Jews be so stopped, as above that of the Gentiles who boasted of their good nature.

VERSE 20.-- Because by the works. As he took away glorying from circumcision, so he wishes to do concerning the rest of the works of the law. And it is a new sentence, although it is joined to what precedes by: Because by the works of the law, etc. The works of the law are called those which were instituted and bounded in the law, as were the ceremonial and figurative ones, which never had power to cleanse the conscience, even if they were done with charity and devotion, because they were not instituted unto justification, but unto the signifying of things to come and the showing of the weakness of sin, because the law did not come to take away sins, 479Dbut to show and to punish them.

No flesh shall be justified, etc. Understand it according to the ceremonial precepts, not the moral, which assuredly justify and are brought to completion in the Gospel.

Before him. Who sees the inmost things, namely whether a thing is done from love of justice or from fear of punishment, which men do not see. For by the law. Here he begins concerning the law, that he may show that justice is not from it. For by the law is the knowledge of sin. He says this, not because sins were unknown before, but because it was known through the law that all of them would not go unpunished with God. Certain sins were known before the law, as when before Pharaoh Joseph, accused of the crime of adultery, was sent into prison. And his brothers said: 480ADeservedly do we suffer these things, because we sinned against our brother (Gen. XXXIX). But certain things were known through the law which before were unknown, as concupiscence and original sin. Certain things also were known through the law to be graver than they were before thought.

VERSE 21.-- Being witnessed, etc. Because the law figured it by many sacraments, by that very thing it bears witness to the justice of God, because in the law no one is justified. The prophets bear witness, by foretelling uod, that which the coming of Christ fulfilled.

VERSE 22.-- But the justice, etc. Not that by which he himself is essentially just, but that with which he clothes the ungodly, when in mercy he makes a believer out of an unbeliever. And that is called the justice of God which would more properly seem to be called mercy, because it has its origin from the promise: 480Band when what God promised is rendered, it is called the justice of God. For it is justice because what was promised has been paid; and when he receives those who flee to him it is called the justice of God, because not to receive them is iniquity.

VERSE 23.-- They need the glory, that is, the indulgence and pardon of sins.

VERSE 24.-- Justified freely. Not through the law, not through our own will, but through the grace of Christ; yet not that it is done without our will. But our will is shown to be weak through the law: that grace may heal the will, and the healed will may fulfil the law, not being set under the law nor needing the law. Freely, that is, with no preceding merits of works, otherwise grace is now not grace, since it is given for this reason, not because we have done good works, but 480Cthat we may be able to do them.

VERSE 25.-- God hath set forth, etc. To this end, that he might show himself truthful in his promises, which showing was necessary, not only for the remission of present sins, but also of those which went before under the forbearance of God, God, that is, enduring and not punishing; and then that he might show in this time of Christ what could be done at no other time, that he should be just and the justifier of him who is of the faith of Jesus. Faith in his blood, that is, the faith of his passion, or through faith and through the passion: for neither avails without the other. For the remission. The effect of remission is twofold, namely to be without punishment and to enjoy glory. The first the just had before the death of Christ, because they did not feel actual punishment. But after the death of Christ the glory of the divine vision was given them, 480Dfrom which they were being deferred while God bore with their offences.

VERSE 26.-- In the forbearance. God patiently bore with the sins of those who were before the law and under the law: he did not punish, nor did he remit them so that they should have glory, until he came who should absolve by the price of his blood the offences both of those who went before and of those who followed.

VERSE 27.-- It is excluded. Whether he has meant the praiseworthy glorifying which is in the Lord, and that as excluded, that is, not driven out so that it should depart, but pressed out so that it should stand forth. Whence silversmiths also are called exclusores; whence the Psalmist: Ut excludanturii, that they may be shut out, who are proved (Psal. LXVII), etc. Or whether he wished to mention the 481Avicious glorying, he says that it is excluded by the law of faith, that is, cast out and thrown away, because by the law of faith each one knows that if he lives well in anything, he has it by the grace of God.

VERS. 28.-- That a man is justified. Not but that the believer ought not afterwards to work through love, as Abraham too willed to offer up his son. For works follow the man justified; they do not go before the man to be justified, but by faith alone, without preceding works, a man becomes just, so that those who had done the works of the law out of fear are not more just, since faith works through love in the heart, even if it does not go forth outwardly in a work. Whence also it is not by the merits of former works that one comes to the justice of faith, in which the Jews preferred themselves. For the good works that are called good before faith are empty, so that they seem to be 481Bgreat strength, and a very swift running, off the road. Where faith was not, a good work was not. For intention makes a work good, and faith directs the intention. Without works. Preceding ones, not following ones, without which faith is empty, as James says: Faith without works is dead (Jac. II); and Paul himself: If I should have all faith (I Cor. XIII), etc.

Through faith. (AUG., Ench., c. 107). This is the faith of Christ which the Apostle commends, the faith which works through love.

VERS. 31.-- God forbid. For the law is not destroyed when, being fulfilled according to the spirit, it ceases according to the letter. We establish. Because we have shown fulfilled what the law says; or we establish, that is, we confirm, because this is the grace of faith by which the law is fulfilled, the law which without faith 481Cwould be weak. For the standing of the law is confirmed, because the mystical and the ceremonial things are fulfilled spiritually, and what fell short among the moral precepts is added in the Gospel. And what the law promised was to come, the faith of the Gospel testifies has arrived. The mystical things therefore, and those that promise, are fulfilled in the Gospel according to the spiritual understanding; but the letter that kills is taken away.

VERS. 1.-- According to the flesh. That is, from the works of the law. As if he should say: Shall we say that he was just from them? No, because if he is just from carnal observance, he has the eternal glory that follows from justice: but he has it from himself, not from God. Or: this justification is in the opinion of men, and not with God. But toward God 481Dhe has glory: therefore he was not justified from works. If therefore he was not justified from works, whence was he justified? It follows, and he says whence, etc.

VERS. 3.-- He believed. To believe was for him a sufficient cause of justice, and it is so for others; yet to him who has time for working, a reward will not be given according to grace only, but according to the debt of his own working; but to him who has not time for working, if he believes, faith alone suffices for justice, and so for salvation, according to the grace set before all, or according to what God laid down as law beforehand.

VERS. 4.-- But to him, etc. As if he should say: Abraham is just from faith: but to him who works those carnal things, 482Aor any good things, that he may merit grace, if there is a reward for him, it is not from grace, but from the debt of his own merit. But to him who does not do these carnal things or any good things, but only believes, faith suffices for justice; and thus he attributes to others what he said of Abraham, namely that if he is just from works, he has glory, but not with God, and therefore he is just from faith.

According to grace. If it is grace, it is given freely, or it stands freely. Thou hast done nothing good, and remission of sins is given thee. Thy works are looked into, and all are found evil.

But according to debt. (AUG.) Do not flatter thyself concerning merits, etc., as far as let us do it by his own gift and bounty.

VERS. 5.-- But to him that believeth, etc. He does not say to him. 482BFor he believes him who believes that the things he speaks are true, which the wicked also do. To believe him is to believe that he is God, which the devils also do. But to believe in him is, by believing, to love him, by believing to hold him dear, by believing to go into him, and to be incorporated into his members.

According to the purpose. As if he should say: The ungodly man is justified without preceding works, and this according to the purpose of the grace of God, that is, according to the grace of God set before all believers, or according to what God laid down long beforehand.

VERS. 7.-- Forgiven. To forgive, to cover, not to impute, are words of the same reckoning and sense. Iniquities. By iniquities is understood original sin, namely the fomes of sin, which is called concupiscence 482Cor concupiscibility, or the law of the members, or the languor of nature, and by other names. And that, before baptism, is fault and punishment; but after baptism, punishment and not fault, which makes the little one apt to covet, but not to covet, and makes the adult even to covet; which indeed in baptism is remitted and passes away as to guilt, but remains as to act. But it is called original because it is drawn from the corrupt condition of our origin, and because we were conceived by the corrupt law of conceiving, out of the sin befalling the first man, that is, by the concupiscence of the flesh; and therefore we are guilty of that sin which is called original.

Sins are covered. (AUG.) Do not so understand what he said, that sins are covered over, as though they were there and alive. 482DHe said covered, therefore, that they might not be seen; and for God to see a sin is to punish it.

VERS. 9.-- In circumcision, that is, at the time of circumcision the faith of Abraham was reputed unto justice.

VERS. 10.-- But in uncircumcision, that is, at the time of uncircumcision.

VERS. 13.-- For not through the law was the promise. Other promises were made to Christ than to Abraham. For to Abraham they were made thus, that those who should imitate him in that manner would be blessed by Christ; but to Christ not so, but so that he should not only be the exemplar and form of the ordering of morals and of works, but that he should bless with an eternal blessing those who imitate him. To his seed. 483AThat is, to all believers who are the seed of Abraham, not by flesh, but by imitation. Or to Christ, to whom the promise is said to have been made, because it was to be fulfilled in him.

VERS. 14.-- For if, etc. As if he should say: Truly Abraham is not the heir of the world through the law: because his sons through the law are not those sons who are called heirs, namely as possessing what he himself has. For if this were so, these incongruities would follow from it: that faith would be made void, by which it stands that Abraham was just; that the promise would be abolished, that is, unfulfilled, so that there are no heirs: for the law makes no heirs, since rather it works wrath, and so transgression; for from it comes transgression, because without it there is none. Therefore, because if these things would follow from the law, then it is from faith that they are heirs, and so the promise is firm.

483BVERS. 15.-- The law works wrath. That it might make offenders guilty, not by an efficient cause, but by grace not helping; or it would make them guilty by temporal punishments, it would work wrath, because [it works] transgression; and in what manner this is, he opens, saying:

For where, etc. (ORIG.) He shows that there cannot be transgression unless there has been a law; yet not that, if there is a law, there will in every kind be transgression: for it can come about that there is a law and there is no transgression, but not conversely.

Nor transgression. He does not say: There is no iniquity. For everyone who passes the law by is unjust, but not the contrary. For those who have not received the law can be called unjust, but they cannot be called transgressors.

VERS. 16.-- Not to him who is of the law. Because such a man as this has fallen away from grace, and therefore for the sake of faith one must withdraw from the law, 483Cthat the promise may be firm: for the law, without the grace of the promise, not only does not take away sin, but even increases it.

VERS. 18.-- Who against hope. He begins to commend the faith of Abraham, that we may imitate him who through faith received justice and such a promise.

So shall thy seed be, etc. It must be known that Abraham first knew God as three and one, and through this merit of faith he obtained the remission of all sins. But after justice, he received a promise from God that he should become the father of many nations. Then again a promise was made to him that his seed should become as the stars, etc.

VERS. 19.-- He was not weakened. Some, puffed up by the reasoning of the world, neglected God: therefore the things that are impossible to the world 483DGod did, that believing through these they might be saved.

VERS. 20.-- In the promise. Isaac, promised against the nature of human generation, was for a sign that the Son of God was to be born of man against human nature; and that the sons of men, through the spirit of regeneration, were to be begotten out of sinners into sons of God, out of mortals into immortals.

VERS. 24.-- In him who raised up Jesus, etc. He has fitly entered upon the discourse concerning the Lord, and says: he died not for his own sins, for in that manner he ought not to have risen again, just as neither did any man before him, but for our sins, that he might free us from them. In the same way as he also restored Abraham and the womb of Sarah, 484Aalready dead through old age and barrenness, to life and to the procreation of children.

VERS. 25.-- Who was delivered up. The death of Christ alone signifies the destruction of the old life, and in the resurrection alone is the new life signified, which begins from justification and will be perfected in immortality.

VERS. 1.-- From faith. Above he said, justified freely by grace, lest faith itself be proud. Let not the faithful man say: that I may merit justification, I have faith: for it is answered him: what hast thou that thou hast not received? Let us have peace, we who have been reconciled to him through Christ, the minister of grace.

VERS. 2.-- Through whom. He enumerates the benefits that are had from 484BChrist.

VERS. 3.-- Tribulation. That tribulation does not take away patience, charity brings about, which is the proper gift of the Holy Spirit.

Hope. That is, the certitude of future glory, which to human reason seems empty: but it is confirmed by the testimony of virtue, that is, of patience or of miracles.

VERS. 5.-- But hope. Because it is in God, who does not deceive, not in lying man; and the pledge of this hope is the Spirit: for it is read: Let the fountain of thy water be thine own, and let no stranger have communication with thee (Eccli. V); he himself is the Spirit, whom the wicked cannot receive, and he is charity, which no one can have and be wicked. But a man can have the name of Christ and baptism, receive the body of the Lord, and have the other sacraments, 484Cand be wicked. Charity therefore is the proper gift of the Spirit, and the singular fountain.

The charity of God. Or: God loves us widely: and we have this in our hearts through the Spirit, who makes us understand the charity of God toward us.

VERS. 6.-- For why. Since God loves us, or we love him through the Spirit, hope will be fulfilled: because unless it be so, Christ suffered in vain. And this is why Christ [suffered] for the ungodly, that is, for love of the ungodly, or in their stead: for the ungodly, not those who had been so of old and were not so then, but when we were weak in sins.

According to the time, that is, for three days only, lest thou despair of the power of him whose good will appears in his death: from whom we receive such earnests, in that he gave 484Dto the ungodly his own death, who keeps for the just his own life. He died for thee, O mortal man, that thou mayest live with him. He took upon himself our death, that he might give us his own life: he received from thee that whereby he might die for thee. He clothed himself with that wherein he might die for thee: he will clothe thee with that wherein thou mayest live with him. He clothed himself with mortal flesh in the virginity of his mother: he will clothe thee with everlasting life in the equality of the Father.

VERS. 7.-- Scarcely. He says, for a just man. Perhaps for a good man: he shows both to be difficult and rare, but the one more difficult and more rare.

For a just man, etc. A man is just by reason of his exercise, who is also good; but there is also a good man who is not just, that is, one who was born in simplicity: an innocent who has not yet laboured 485Ato enlarge himself with goods, such as are the little ones cleansed in baptism; and although the just man is the better, yet the cause of innocence is the more pitiable, rather than that of justice, because justice of this kind is not without severity.

VERS. 8.-- While yet. Behold, while he hated us according to our sins, he loved us according to that which is his own work: which also he did before the constitution of the world. It had to be said how much he loved us, lest we should despair; and what manner of men we were, lest we should be proud. There was another way also possible to God, who can do all things, but none more fitting for the healing of our misery. For what so lifts us up, and frees us from despair of immortality, as that he made so much of us, that a man should die for us?

VERS. 9.-- Much more therefore. It is a heavier thing to die for sin 485Band to take away sin, than to save those already just and even co-operating. In his blood. Because thus the devil is overcome by justice, not by power. By justice, because the devil slew one undeserving, namely Christ: whence also he by right loses the others. Not by power, because the devil is a lover of power, a deserter of justice, wherein men imitate him the more. It pleased God therefore that, conquering not by power but by justice, he should rescue man, wherein man might imitate him: but afterwards, in the resurrection, power followed, because the dead man lived again, never afterwards to die.

VERS. 10.-- We were enemies. Not sinners in any manner whatever. We are reconciled. Because before we were justly under the power of the devil, our nature being depraved by sin.

485CVERS. 12.-- Therefore. He said that justice and life are through Christ. And that it can be through him, he intends to prove by a likeness in the lesser case.

Through one. Namely Adam: the Apostle did not say one Eve, holding to the custom, in that he attributes the succession of human posterity (which succumbs to the sin and the death coming from him) not to the woman, but to the man. For posterity is not wont to be named from the woman, but from the man. Or, because the woman is from the man, and of both there is one flesh. Whether therefore it be said from Eve or from Adam, either pertains to the first man: and by this the Apostle willed original sin to be understood as the sin of propagation, whose chief is Adam, not of imitation, whose chief is the devil; whence: By the envy of the devil death entered into this world. [Vulg. Sap. 2:24 invidia autem diaboli mors introivit in orbem terrarum, "into the whole earth"]

485DUnto all men. Because even before the law, when it did not so seem, the law not teaching it, sin was indeed imputed among men, but not with God, as sinners supposed, with whom it was thought that it would go unpunished, since it was not known that he would judge: but when the law was given, they came to know that God cares for human things and judges them. Before, it was not imputed, but death reigned securely, the devil possessing men by reason of the impunity that was believed in, until Moses, through whom the knowledge of the one God returned. Death therefore reigned (as another reading has it), yet not unto all, but unto those like Adam the transgressor, who, God being neglected, served the creature, as he consented to the devil in the place of God. Such were almost all until the law. Very few, 486Alike Abraham, served the one God, and over them death did not reign; rather they were kept in hope, to be freed at the coming of Christ.

VERS. 13.-- Until the law, etc. That is, because neither could the law take away sin, but increased it, whether the natural law or the written: but it was not imputed, that is, it was not known: yet it reigned until Moses, that is, until the law: because neither could the law itself take away the reign of death, which reigns while it does not allow the guilt of sin to come to eternal life, but drags it to Gehenna. This reign the grace of Christ alone destroyed, even among the ancients: apart from whom it reigned over all: even over those who did not sin by their own proper will, as Adam did, but were held by the original fault, as children are.

VERS. 14.-- But it reigned. It was not imputed, but 486Bthe effect showed it, because bodily death reigned daily through sundry sufferings, at last by dissolution, until Moses, when it was the less seen.

Who is a figure. Adam is the figure of Christ: because as he is the father of all according to the flesh, so is Christ according to faith; and as from the side of that one Eve was formed, so from the side of this one flowed forth the sacraments, by which the Church is saved. And therefore, as that one could impart to his sons sin and death, so this one imparts to his own his own justice and life; and this one moreover confers more of good upon his own than that one of evil: and therefore he is more able to save than that one to destroy.

VERS. 15.-- But not as, etc. The figure lies in this, that one amends, one sinned; but the case of Adam is not such as the case of Christ: because one is 486Cthe offence of Adam, by which many, that is, those transgressing in like manner, died; but the grace of Christ is unto more: because it is both unto these, and unto those not transgressing in like manner.

VERS. 17.-- For if. (AMBR.) Death reigned, it does not reign, because they who through the law, etc., as far as for there is not a general damnation or justification in all.

Through one it reigned, etc. Because what strength it had in him, it exercised upon all who came after, of whom he was the matter: just as the fault also, which was his alone, was poured over into all. Much more, etc. Because eternally, whereas death reigned in them temporally and with an end.

VERS. 18.-- Through the justice of one, etc. Not that all begotten of Adam are regenerated through Christ, but as no man's carnal generation is except through 486DAdam, so no man's spiritual generation is except through Christ. If there were any begotten apart from Adam, and any regenerated apart from Christ, he would not say all and all. But as there is no man apart from that generation, so there is no just man apart from this. The same men he afterwards calls many.

VERS. 19.-- For as, etc. He determines the offence of one and the justice of one, so that, as that one destroyed by the desert of sin, so this one may be seen to have freed us by the desert of justice. So also through the one, etc. He says of the man, not the faith of God or of the Word, lest thou suppose that the just of old were freed in the Word of God alone, that is, by faith in the Word alone without faith in the incarnation.

VERS. 20.-- But the law, etc. He had shown that Christ 487Aforgives all sins, both original and actual: here he adds that he frees also from the sin of the law, that is, from transgression, so that the Jews are the more beholden to Christ; as if he should say: Justification is first, but the law entered secretly.

(AMBR.) Here the Apostle says what came about when the law was given, etc., as far as God forgave all things.

But the law entered in. To those born in sins the law is given for the taming of pride, as it were: There is no lack of one to command, but there is a lack of one to fulfil, because he who is born in sin cannot fulfil it: therefore Christ was born, that is, the grace that should heal. That the offence might abound. Namely, that he who was in filth might by transgressing grow the fouler; that the middling man might have a schoolmaster, the perfect man a sign, and the hard man might feel 487Bthe scourge. It abounded the more. Because the grace of Christ profits even those whom the devil could not conquer: and because sin reigned for a time, grace unto eternity.

VERS. 21.-- As sin reigned unto death. He does not add, through one or through Adam: because he treats not only of that which men drew from Adam, but also of that which they added by their own will. But when he says: Let grace reign, he adds, through Jesus Christ, etc., because through him there is made the remission not only of original sins, but also of voluntary ones.

VERS. 1.-- Shall we continue. This perverse men take from that word: Where the offence abounded, grace also 487Cdid more abound. [Vulg. Rom. 5:20 Ubi autem abundavit delictum, superabundavit gratia, without et] To say this is to be ungrateful to grace. And because grace is strong where the offence abounded, one must not continue in sin, as some reckon, for the sake of greater grace. For grace did more abound where the offence abounded, not by the merit of him who sins, but by the help of him who succours. One must not therefore continue in sin, but rather we ought and are able to be, as it were, dead to sin and buried through that same grace, and to rise again unto justice, and afterwards unto eternal life.

VERS. 2.-- We are dead. That is, freed from sin through baptism, so that it may no longer have dominion in us, through grace. For to die to sin is to be freed from sin. How shall we yet, etc. For since grace has granted this, that we should die to sin, what else do we do if we live in it, but that we should be ungrateful to grace?

487DVERS. 3.-- Know you not. Being dead to sin, which is done in baptism, we ought not to live to it again, so that it should be necessary to die to it again: because in the death of Christ, that is, in the likeness of the death of Christ, that as he died once in the flesh and lives always, so we, having died once to evil through baptism, may always live to good. Or he says in the death: because death is the cause of this purification.

VERS. 4.-- Buried together. Whatever was done in the cross of Christ, in the burial, in the resurrection, in the ascension, in the sitting at the right hand, was so done that the Christian life might be conformed to these things, which were mystically not only spoken but also done. Consider the several things of Christ, in whom the old man had lived according to punishment, hunger, thirst 488Aand the like, not according to fault: in this manner he ended and disposed the oldness, so that, enduring the pain of the cross, he had his limbs thus stretched out and fastened, that they might not be moved to their former acts, from which, buried also, he rested, withdrawn from human sight, requiring of us that we lay aside the oldness of sins with the sorrow and groaning of penance: that our limbs be fastened together through continence and justice, lest we return to our former evils, from which we should so perfectly rest that neither the sight nor the memory of them be had: and not only does he require this of us in the sacrament of the passion, but he also brings it about, if we will to imitate him. He rose again from the dead. The death and the resurrection of Christ are also sacraments.

VERS. 6.-- The old man. That is, the old acts are crucified, that is, dead. Our oldness and our curse 488Bconsist in two things, namely in fault and in punishment. But Christ by his single oldness consumed our twofold one. For in the sepulchre he rested one day and two nights. By the one day his single oldness is signified, but by the two nights our twofold one; whence: Christ blotted out our fault, present, past, and future. The past by forgiving it, the present by drawing us back from it, the future by conferring grace that we might avoid it. The punishment likewise he consumed, wholly blotting out the punishment of Gehenna, so that they who truly repent may not feel it. The temporal punishment, however, he did not entirely take away: for hunger, thirst, death and the like remain; but he cast down its reign and dominion, and at the last he will utterly destroy it.

VERS. 9.-- Knowing that Christ. (AUG). One 488Crose again now not to die. Lazarus rose again, but to die; the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue rose again, but to die; the son of the widow rose again, but to die: Christ rose again not to die. Hear the Apostle, Christ rising again, etc. Hope for such a resurrection, and for the sake of this be a Christian, not for the sake of the happiness of this earth.

VERS. 10.-- For in that he died to sin. (AUG.) The Apostle commends the sacrament of baptism, that as he, by dying once, is preached as having died by a likeness of sin, so whoever has been baptized in him may die to that same thing of which that was the likeness, that is, to sin; and may live by being born again from the font, as he lived by rising again from the sepulchre.

VERS. 11.-- So do you also. Whatever he said above 488Dbelongs to men through the grace of Christ, here he attributes to the Romans.

VERS. 12.-- Let it not therefore. Because above he said that we are dead to sins, and ought not to live in it, since no one is without sin: he determines what things are most of all to be guarded against, as though he concluded what was asked above: Shall we continue in sin.

That you should obey its concupiscences. Concupiscence is sometimes a name for the fomes, namely for the inborn vice; sometimes for the inward act, which is present both in the first motion, which is called propassio, and in the second, which is called delight, and in the third, which is called consent. Here he does not forbid the concupiscence that is in the first motion, because it is not in our power when it rises: but 489Aby the grace of God we can restrain it, that it may not come as far as delight and consent, which he does forbid.

VERS. 15.-- What then? Because the law is from God, he sins who forsakes it for grace. What then? Shall we sin. Because we are not under the law, which terrifies, but under grace, which promises well? what then? shall we sin? This certain men [say], who preach that the law is, as it were, cleaving to us or coercing us, and is to be held to.

VERS. 16.-- Know you not that, etc. Lest, professing God in words, we should be made the devil's, he forewarns us that we are the servants of him whose will we do.

VERS. 17.-- But thanks be to God, etc. He both shows their change, and has disclosed how pleasing this is to him, offering a hymn to God. For you were, he says, the servants of sin: but of your own accord and by the free will of your mind 489Byou shook off his dominion, and embraced the spiritual doctrine. The form of doctrine. Our doctrine is a form, which restores the deformed image of God.

VERS. 19.-- A human thing, etc. Thus far the Apostle has shown that one must not sin. Here he says what is to be done thenceforward, namely that justice be served, concerning which there is no one who can excuse himself, because there is no one who cannot work well, at least in will: which is the same thing through grace.

For as you have yielded, etc. (AUG.) If not more, at least as much as then, lest the faith should be shunned as harsh and insupportable.

As then no fear compelled, but the lust and pleasure of sin led, so now the delight of a justice grown up 489Cleads, though not yet perfect; whence he said: A human thing.

So now. Because justice ought even to be loved more than iniquity then was, so that for justice a man may bear pains, and despise all things, even death.

VERS. 20.-- Free. It is the servant's liberty when it delights him to sin, which comes of free choice. He serves freely who gladly does the will of the Lord; and so he serves justice freely who loves, who rejoices.

VERS. 21.-- What fruit therefore. This recalling makes former things abhorrent, and makes us the more beholden to grace. You are ashamed. For there is a certain temporal confusion, namely a disturbance of the mind looking back upon its 489Down sins, and shuddering at the sight, and blushing at the shudder, and correcting itself by the blush. The end of them, etc. Because death is the worthy recompense for sin: but eternal life, which is the end of the just, is given by grace alone through Christ, because both the merits are from grace, and grace will be rendered for grace.

VERS. 22.-- But now being made free. (AUG.) He said free with respect to justice, not made free: now, with respect to sin, not free, lest they ascribe this to themselves, but he accordingly says made free, according to the sentence of the Lord: If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed (Joan. VIII).

The wages. Rightly a wage, because to the devil's warfare eternal death is rendered as a debt. To whom would the just Judge render a crown, if the merciful Father had not 490Abestowed grace? how would that debt be rendered, unless that grace were first freely bestowed?

(AUG.) Since sins had far separated the human race from God, we had to be reconciled through a mediator, who alone was born without sin, lived and was slain, so that human pride might both be reproved and healed through the humility of God, and it might be shown to man how far he had withdrawn from God, etc.

VERS. 1.-- Know you not. Thus far concerning the force of grace: now, that the law is no longer to be held to; and he treats of the end of the law and of its former uselessness: let not the Romans therefore wonder that the Apostle says: You are not under the law, but under grace: above it was said that it does not justify, 490Bhere that it must cease; because it was given until Christ. The order: Know you not this, namely: that the natural law has dominion in a man for as long a time as he lives, which you ought not to be ignorant of; because you know the law, and I speak to them that know the law? in which law what I say is made manifest, if it be understood spiritually; or, the law of Moses has dominion in a man, that he may obey it; because you also know the law of Moses, for to them that know, etc. And thus the letter can be read in two ways, either of the natural law, or of the Mosaic. He liveth. For a law is said to be dead when its authority ceases.

VERS. 2.-- For the woman that is under a husband. That he may strengthen their minds, he uses the example of human law. The Romans know law, because they are not Barbarians, but have grasped natural justice, partly from the Greeks, as did the Greeks 490Cand the Hebrews.

VERS. 3.-- Therefore, the husband being alive, etc. If a man, keeping a dead law, wishes to belong to faith, he is an adulterer in both, nor does Christ profit him. But if her husband be dead. Thus, the law being ended, he does not transgress who passes over to Christ, the figures being dismissed.

VERS. 4.-- Through the body of Christ. Because Christ was the fulfilment and the truth: but the things of the law were the figure and shadow of Christ, and of those things that were fulfilled in Christ.

VERS. 5.-- For when we were. Here he sets down four acts of man: before the law, under the law, under grace: then in the other life, where there is no warfare.

VERS. 6.-- But now, etc. (AUG.) In the foregoing likeness there are three things: the husband, etc., as far as that they 490Ddo not overcome him.

From the law of death. For concupiscence was increased when the law forbade where there was no faith, and to the heap of sins the crime of transgression was added; because where there is no law, neither is there transgression.

In newness of spirit. By the works of the new man, which we attain not by our own strength or by the law, but by grace, namely of the spirit, in which works we must so abide that nothing be added from the works of the law, which are old.

VERS. 7.-- What shall we say then. Since the law is of death and increased the powers of sin, holding a man back from good working; the law therefore seems to be sin, that is, teaching to sin, or such a thing that its author sinned in giving it, as though it were an evil thing. No, but rather it is good: 491Ait made sin to be recognized, because before, certain things were not known either to be sins at all, or to be so grave, or to be punishable. God forbid. But sin. He shows that the law is not sin, but the indicator of sin: so that thus the soul, by anxiety over its guilt, might be turned to the receiving of grace.

(AUG.) God forbid. In one word he acquits the law, etc., as far as great is the authority of the Apostle defending it.

(THEOD.) But those words, I did not know, and I was not aware, do not here signify ignorance altogether, but he says this: I took a more exact knowledge of natural discernment through the law.

For concupiscence. The Apostle reads this as general, whence all things come. Good is the law, which, while it forbids this, forbids all things. Concupiscence. Some understand it 491Bas general. Others as that of which it is spoken in the Decalogue: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's thing or his wife (Exod. XX). [Vulg. Exod. 20:17 Non concupisces domum proximi tui: nec desiderabis uxorem ejus, "thy neighbour's house … nor shalt thou desire his wife"] As general, because from it comes every evil. I was not aware. In his own person he pleads a general cause.

VERS. 8.-- But occasion being taken. Because our carnality is such that it desires forbidden things the more ardently: which, if they were not mentioned, it would lie as though asleep. And the devil, seeing the law given for men's help, blazed up the more and pressed the more, that he might turn it to their ruin, whereas before, possessing them as it were securely, he tempted them less; or, occasion being taken in the things themselves, as at the sight of a woman or of gold.

(AUG.) Concupiscence was less when before the law thou didst sin secure, etc., as far as it is entire, when it transgresses the law.

491C(AMBR.) All concupiscence, by saying this, he marks out all sins. For there was sin before, but not all sin, when the crime of transgression was still lacking. But now all sin has been added, because transgression also.

(AUG.) For concupiscence was increased out of the prohibition of the law, when as yet the grace of him who frees was lacking.

VERS. 9.-- But I lived. It is plain: because he speaks not out of his own person, but generally out of the person of man. But I lived. Note two men in the same man, the inward and the outward, that is, reason and the fomes, which is in the flesh. He says that the inward man consents to the law, and by his testimony he approves the law to be good. But the outward man fights against the inward and against the law, and takes it captive, and through the law has a greater 491Dpower of sinning. But when it came, etc. Here is the second act, under the law. That is: Here the Apostle speaks in the state of a man placed under the law. It revived. It began to appear and to rebel. It revived, he says, not it lived. For it had lived once in paradise, when against the precept given the thing admitted appeared plainly enough. But while men born sinners lived without a commandment, it lay hidden as though dead, without knowledge, because without restraint: but when the law was given, it revived in the knowledge of man, which had once lived in the knowledge of the first man.

VERS. 10.-- Was found. Before, he was a sinner unknown to himself; but now he is made a transgressor manifest to himself.

492AFor. As if he should say: How was it given me unto death? Because through it I was seduced by a false sweetness. Occasion being taken, etc. What is coveted becomes sweeter while it is forbidden, and thus sin deceives through the commandment. For out of the prohibition, where charity fails, the desire of evil grows: and this being done, what is forbidden becomes sweeter, and so it deceives by a false sweetness. For that sweetness is deceitful which more and greater bitternesses of punishments follow. It seduced. It drew from good to evil, and through this led on to eternal damnation.

It killed. (AUG.) With thine own sword, which thou wast carrying, etc., as far as be therefore humble and thou shalt be able to conquer.

VERS. 12.-- Therefore the law indeed. It is holy, teaching soundly. And the commandment, that is, what through it 492Bis commanded.

Holy, in itself. And just, that is, justifying the sinner. And good. That is, useful, acquiring life. And since it is established for me that the law is good, and yet from it comes death to me, as was said above, therefore that which is good, has it been made death, that is, is it given me by God, so that it is the efficient cause of death? No: but the fomes is the efficient cause, which turns a good thing into evil.

VERS. 13.-- That sin might appear. I do not say, that it might be, because it also was, when it did not appear, as above. I did not know concupiscence. He did not say, I did not have it.

Through the good. The law. Not indeed effecting sin, but rather showing it and forbidding it.

492CThat it might become above measure. Because through the law it did not fail, but grew rather beyond its accustomed desires.

VERS. 14.-- But I. Thus far he has excused the law, that the fault ought not to be poured back upon it; here he says that neither ought it upon the principal nature, that is, upon reason, according to what it has here from God; and so not upon the Creator, but upon men, who are corrupted of themselves, so that they cannot resist depraved motions. I am carnal. Not unfittingly does the Apostle say this even of himself, according to the flesh so long as he lives here, on account of the motions of the flesh. And every holy man says this rightly. Sold under sin. And this from the fault of the first man, who for the delight of forbidden food sold himself and all others. Or, under sin, that is, that they may be servants of sin. Or each one has sold himself by the habit of his own will.

492DVERS. 16.-- For that which I work. He proves that he is a servant of sin: because what I work according to the outward man, by leaving good undone or by doing evil, I understand according to the inward man that it ought not to be worked. Truly I work what I understand not, because I both leave undone the good that I will, and do the evil that I will not. I understand not. Because I see that I know one thing through the law, and do another. For not the good which I will, this I do; but what. Being subject to sin, he does what he wills not. I do. I covet; not that the Apostle goes after concupiscence, and that it drags him to evils: he wrestled, he was not subjugated: he sets this forth to thee concerning himself, lest thou despair of this in thyself.

493AVERS. 17.-- But now. Now redeemed: now, the grace of Christ having been received by him who before was sold under sin. Not I. The mind is free, the flesh captive. It dwelleth, although, by not consenting to it, he lives by faith. There are desires, but if they do not reign he himself does not do the thing; but he would do it if he consented. But sin that dwelleth in me. How does it dwell, since it is not a substance but a privation of good? Behold, the body of the first man was corrupted through sin. And that corruption, by the condition of the offence, remains in the body, holding the force of the divine sentence given in Adam, by whose fellowship the soul is stained with sin.

VERS. 18.-- For to will. To will, not: because to will the good lies close by me, because it lies beside the flesh and rests, powerless to rise from [ab; read ad, "to"] the working of the good. 493BClose by: because it is in a manner natural to will the good through reason, but this willing is such that it is always overcome by the force of the flesh: but the willing of God overcomes the flesh. To will. The things the law commands are good, so much so that he naturally loves them, and wills to do them, but the strength to accomplish is lacking.

To will. (AUG.) The good man always wills not to covet at all, but he never accomplishes this in this life.

To accomplish. He does not say to do, but to accomplish, because he does not do nothing. He does good: because he does not consent to concupiscence; but he does not accomplish it so as not to covet at all. So also the enemy does evil, while he stirs desire, but does not accomplish it, because he does not drag him through to evil.

VERS. 19.-- For not the good which I will. I do not find how to accomplish the good, because neither that good which I will. From 493Cthe side on which it would seem the less he shows it, but on the contrary the evil, because even that which I will not, etc. Or: I do not find the good, because it is not there. For many foolish men do not find the good in a thing, which nevertheless is there.

(AUG.) It is one thing not to covet, another not to go after one's own concupiscences. Not to covet belongs to the wholly perfect; not to go after one's own concupiscences belongs to the man fighting, to the man wrestling. Where the fight is hot, why is the victory despaired of?

VERS. 20.-- But if, etc. He concludes the foregoing sentence: therefore I do not work it, namely the evil; from which the former question is concluded, namely that he consents to the law of God. But sin that dwelleth in me. Pressed by sin, he does its will, which nevertheless 493Dis by the fault of man. He says this, that he may mark from how great things God rescues man.

VERS. 21.-- I find therefore. He had said that the law is good, that nature is good, which wills the same thing and consents to it: here he joins the good law as a helper to the good nature; and yet the outward man conquers those two joined together: so that a man, seeing that he can escape by neither, may be beholden to grace. To him that willeth. Only: because I cannot accomplish it, because the evil is near to reason, lying in wait in the flesh as it were at the doors of the soul, and it forces him to do another thing than the man and the law will.

VERS. 22.-- According to the inward. (AMB.) Because the flesh is drawn by descent from Adam it has sin in itself; if the soul were drawn by descent, sin would dwell in it also: 494Abecause Adam's soul sinned. But if the soul had sin in itself, man would not know himself.

VERS. 23.-- But I see. (AUG.) It belongs to the body of death that the law of the members fight against the law of the mind, while the flesh lusts against the spirit. But the law of sin does not reign, when its desires are not obeyed. The law in the members. Rightly is the tinder of sin called a law: because it was lawfully brought about that he who did not obey his superior should not be served by his inferior, that is, the flesh. Captive. From the flesh, in part: because the mind fights back, and delights together in the law of God. So it is read of the Apostle himself: the mind consents not to sin, death contends, the mind consents not. There is in me something dead, something alive: what is to be hoped from thence?

494BVERS. 24.-- Unhappy. Not in the mind, but in the flesh. Who shall deliver me? He shall be delivered when this mortal shall put on immortality, where no concupiscence shall remain.

VERS. 25.-- Therefore I myself. Here is the third act in the law of the spirit. But because he says that he has been delivered by grace, lest anyone grow slack in his security, as though sin should hurt no further, he determines in what way the deliverance is, if he shall have remained in grace. Otherwise sin will seize him again. I myself. I in the flesh, I in the mind: not two, but one out of both; with the mind I consent not, with the flesh I lust.

494CVERS. 1.-- Nothing therefore now. Even if before, not now: since [they are] in Christ. Nothing of damnation. Because through the grace of baptism and the laver of regeneration there has been loosed both the guilt itself with which thou wast born, and whatsoever thou hast committed before.

(AUG.) Even if they have desires of the flesh to which they do not consent, etc., as far as but this good regeneration has wrought.

VERS. 2.-- For the law of the spirit. Here he shows by what grace delivers, namely by the Holy Spirit, because [it is] the law of the spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who teaches what is to be done and what is not, who is the giver of life, and this through Christ who gives the Spirit: and he sets forth how, in Christ.

VERS. 3.-- For what was impossible. He shows how in 494DChrist the deliverance was made. Through the flesh. Through carnality, which was rebelling, and on the hearing of the law was the more incited; thus the law of the letter was made weak through the flesh, and therefore it was impossible for it to deliver from the law of sin and of death.

Sending his own Son. (AUG.) Not where he was not: who is everywhere, etc., as far as because he appeared visible to the world.

Into the likeness, etc. Not into sinful flesh; because his mother conceived him not by concupiscence but by grace. It was not therefore sinful, because it was neither conceived in the concupiscence of lust, nor had in itself the cause of sin, nor did he sin in it. In punishment therefore it is like to ours, not in the quality of sin.

495AAnd of sin. (ORIG.) That is: By the victim of his own flesh which he offered on the altar of the cross, he condemned sin, and reduced it to nothing in his own flesh.

He condemned. That is, he destroyed the devil, that is, for the sin which he works in the flesh of Christ. Or sin, that is, he condemned the tinder proceeding from the sin of Adam, that is, he weakened it.

VERS. 4.-- That the justification. So is sin condemned through Christ that the justice which the law of Moses promised might be consummated.

VERS. 5.-- For they that are according to the flesh. He that walketh according to the flesh is not just, because neither is he who is according to it. Why not? because he desires carnal things as the highest goods, which is repugnant to justice.

VERS. 6.-- For the prudence. He who savours these things which are of the flesh 495Bis not just; for the prudence of the flesh is death. Life and peace. Life indeed referred to this, the affection of the flesh is death; but peace to that which follows: the affection of the flesh is enmity toward God.

VERS. 7.-- Because the wisdom of the flesh. By enumerating these things he deters from obedience to the flesh.

It is an enemy. While it thinks God can do nothing beyond what is seen in the natures of things.

VERS. 9.-- If yet. He speaks ambiguously, because they are not yet of perfect faith, but there is hope of their being perfected. The Spirit of God. The Spirit of Christ, because the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ are the same.

VERS. 10.-- The body indeed. By the name of the body he signifies the whole man, as Ezekiel conversely 495Cby the name of the soul, when he says: The soul that hath sinned, etc. And the sense is: If the spirit of Christ is in you, although the body be dead, that is, although the man be dead because of sins, that is, in sins, yet the spirit, that is, the soul which had been ungodly, lives: because it is joined to God, who is life, and this because of justification, that is, the remission of sins, which is from the Holy Spirit. Dead, he says, not mortal. For before sin the body was animal, that is, mortal, namely able to die. But which it was not necessary to die: now it is called dead because of sin, that is, because it is necessary to die. Because of sin to be shunned, this weakness is kept back, that thereby he may the more fear to sin.

VERS. 11.-- But if the Spirit. (AUG.) Mark that the Holy Spirit, etc., as far as even as who shall declare the generation 495Dof the Son?

He shall quicken also your mortal. (ID.) Behold the fourth act. In the first action, etc., as far as because we had forsaken God who is above us.

Mortal. Not dead, because in the resurrection, when this mortal shall put on immortality, not only the necessity of dying, which it now has because of sin, but not even the mortality which the animal body had before sin, shall remain.

Because of him that dwelleth. It appears most evidently that man deserved, because of sin, the death not only of the spirit but also of the body, and that through the Holy Spirit both were delivered by Christ.

VERS. 13.-- But if by the Spirit. Either by the Holy Spirit 496Aor by our own: which nevertheless is not so, save by the working of the Holy Spirit.

VERS. 14.-- They are driven. He says they are driven, not they are ruled. For it is more to be driven than to be ruled: for we say that one is driven, as scarcely doing anything; but that he is ruled, as already doing something, who is therefore ruled that he may act rightly. But they are driven, not because they do nothing of themselves, but because, that they may do something, they are impelled by the force of grace.

(AUG., lib. de Correp. et Grat., c. 2.) Let them not therefore deceive themselves who say: To what end for us, etc., as far as let them rejoice that they have received.

VERS. 15.-- For you have not received, etc. You ought to be sons, not servants, because you have not received the spirit of bondage: which makes men serve unwilling through fear of punishment.

But you have received the spirit of adoption. It is the same spirit, 496Bbut because of diverse works it is differently named: he is called the spirit of wrath to the Egyptians, to whom the water divided by the spirit did harm. The son of Israel is not called [a spirit] of wrath, to whom the divided water was of profit. He is the spirit of fear to those who, convicted by the law of their sins and of their own weakness, did not understand the grace of the spirit. He is the spirit of liberty by his working to those to whom regeneration unto life eternal, and faith which works through love, has been imparted. One spirit therefore, which makes two fears. Which also make two kinds of servants. For there is a servant who is also a son, who fears the Lord and honours the father, whence Malachi: If I am Lord, where is my fear? If father, where is my honour? (Malach. I). And there is a servant who fears punishment, but does not love justice. And because mention is made of fears, it is to be known 496Cthat besides the natural fear, which is in all, there are four fears, namely: the worldly, which is evil and not from God; and the servile, which is good and from God, but is not sufficient; the initial, which is good and sufficient; and the chaste, which is good and perfecting, of which it is here treated: For it begets us sons of God. In whom we cry. This again is from the gift of the Spirit, which makes us so to cry Abba, in Hebrew, father in Latin. Abba, father. Because of the mystery, the Apostle set down both. And in his passion Christ said, Abba, father, because the Church is of both peoples, and suffering with her he showed in himself that her sons (the martyrs, namely) ought not to despair, if at the time of passion any sadness from human frailty should creep in.

VERS. 16.-- That we are the sons of God. This the Holy Spirit makes us 496Dto recognize, while in the Church remission of sins is made; which although the whole Trinity works, yet it is understood to pertain to the Holy Spirit, because he is common to the Father and the Son, and the union of both; through whom is made that fellowship and unity by which we are made one body of the only-begotten Son of God. For unity joins us together, which charity makes, which is not save from the Holy Spirit. These things are said that we may love unity, and fear separation.

VERS. 17.-- Heirs. Even though God does not depart, which is spoken according to human laws. Or he will depart, so that he be not seen through a glass in a dark manner as now, but face to face. It can also be said that Christ our head, departing to the passion, left us 497Athe possession of ecclesiastical peace, as he himself says: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave to you (Joan. XIV). Christ also is our inheritance. Whence: The Lord is the portion of my inheritance (Psal. XV), etc.

If yet we suffer with him. To mortify the deeds of the flesh, whence life shall be, no one can without trouble, for which patience is necessary.

VERS. 19.-- For the expectation of the creature. The creature: they are the good, who remain in the creation of God, or because they are the cause of all things. Corruption is vanity, to which the creature is subjected. For all things that are born are weak and corruptible, and thereby vain: because they cannot keep their own state.

(AUG.) What he says, for the expectation, etc. It is so to be understood that neither sense, etc., as far as it labours 497Band lies under corruption.

VERS. 20.-- Not willingly, etc. Willingly it sinned, but not willingly does it bear the penalty, in that it is subjected to deceit: but because of the justice and the clemency of him who both punishes sin, and purposes to heal.

VERS. 21.-- Because the creature itself also. (AUG.) Now it is a creature only, since the form of the sons is not yet perfected, etc., as far as for man, having lost the seal of the image, remained only a creature.

Shall be delivered. He shall be revealed; it awaits revela; he subjoined, shall be delivered. All these things through the Spirit.

VERS. 22.-- Every creature. (AUG.) Man. Every creature is either corporeal, etc., as far as although not in all men. Every creature. (AMBR.) All the elements fulfil their offices with labour, which is 497Cfor our sake: whence they shall rest when we have been taken up; and therefore let us prepare ourselves diligently.

It groaneth. It is always new in this, which is marked by the inchoative verb, and for desire of the heavenly fatherland. It travaileth. That is, it grieves.

Until now. (AUG.) Because although some one in Abraham's bosom has ceased to grieve, yet still in those who are not yet delivered every creature groans.

VERS. 23.-- Not only, etc. (AUG.) That is, not only in the man of the body, but we also in our own selves apart from the body, the troubles of the body excepted.

Not only. (AUG., in expos. propos. in 53. in epist. ad Rom.) Not only that which in men is called merely a creature, etc., as far as or with trouble disquieting.

497DThe first-fruits of the spirit. That is, of those whose spirits have already been offered to God as in sacrifice, and kindled with the divine fire of charity. Adoption. That the body also may receive the benefit of adoption, and that in every part they may be sons of God.

VERS. 24.-- For by hope. He therefore says it that the merit of hope may seem the greater and therefore ought to save.

The Spirit helpeth our infirmity. (AUG.) Because we groan and ask to be delivered, but lest we ask either before the time or contrariwise, the Spirit helps. What prayer obtains is evidently the gift of God, but to pray also is of grace.

VERS. 26.-- Unutterable. For how should that be uttered which is desired, when it is unknown? 498AYet it is not altogether unknown. For if it were utterly unknown, it would not be desired. And again, if it were seen, it would not be sought with groanings.

He searcheth. (AMBR.) Not as though seeking what he knows not, to whom nothing is hidden, and to whom the prayer of all spirits is known.

VERS. 28.-- But we know that to them that love, etc. As if he should say: Not only does the Holy Spirit do this, but he also makes all things turn out unto good for them that love him, whether prosperous or adverse; for such a God comforts by prosperous things, exercises by adverse. Profitable therefore are the evils which the faithful piously endure, either for the amending or the taking away of sins, or for the exercising and proving of justice, or for the showing forth of the misery of this life. For although the death of the flesh came originally from the sin of the first 498Bman, yet the good use of it has made most glorious martyrs. And therefore not only it, but all the evils of the world also, had to remain when sins were remitted, that man might have wherewith to contend for the truth, and whence the virtue of the faithful might be exercised.

According to the purpose. As if he should say: That they are called is from nothing else than from the predestination of God. And thence it is that all things work together unto good: not from merit.

VERS. 29.-- For whom, God, he predestinated, that is, prepared by grace bestowed that they should believe the word of preaching: those he foreknew, that is, long before knew beforehand, to be made conformable to the Son, who is the image of the Father, in every way the same with the Father. Whence it is said: He that 498Cseeth me seeth the Father also (Joan. XIV).

Of the image. That we may bear the image of the heavenly, as we have borne the image of the earthly. Or the firstborn. Because before every creature he was not made but born, and because he was the first born without sin, and the first to rise again impassible, in which he has brethren.

VERS. 30.-- He called. The outward calling is made through preachers and is common to the good and to the bad. But the inward is of the elect only. Of the outward it is said: Many are called, but few chosen. By calling predestination is fulfilled. To call is to help the knowledge concerning faith, or to prick him whom he makes to hear, and this is of the elect only. He magnified. This of the foreknown, not of the others, who, although they believe for a time and seem good, yet because they do not abide, are not magnified. 498DHe magnified, or he shall magnify: but this is to come, and yet it is spoken as past: because God is said to have done the things which from eternity he disposed to do; whence Isaias: Who hath made the things that are to come (Isa. XLIV). To such all things are unto good, even that they go astray, that thereby they may be the more wary, and not trusting in themselves. Four things are here mentioned: predestination, calling, justification, magnification. One is in God, and three in us. For our predestination is not in us, but hidden with him in his foreknowledge. But the three remaining are in us.

VERS. 31.-- If God be for us. (AUG.) God is for us, that he should predestinate us before we were, that he should call us when we were turned away, that he should justify us 499Awhen we were sinners, and glorify us when we were mortal.

VERS. 32.-- He delivered up. This is said because the Father delivered up the Son; but the author of this cup is also he himself who drinks it. Whence the Apostle: Christ loved us, and delivered himself up for us (Ephes. V). If therefore the Father delivered up the Son, and the Son himself, what did Judas do? The Father in delivering up the Son did well; the Son in delivering up himself did well; Judas in delivering up his master for avarice did ill. For that which has been bestowed upon us out of the passion of Christ shall not be reckoned to the malice of Judas; he shall have the wage of malice, Christ the praise of grace. All things. It is less to give us all things than for our sake to deliver Christ up to death. And so all the higher things, namely God the Trinity, are 499Bours for the seeing and the enjoying. Things equal, namely the angels, to whom we shall be made equal in the time to come, for the living together; but now we are inferior. Things lower also are ours for the ruling. And likewise certain higher things too, as the sublime angels and all the heavenly ministries of God, are ours, not by dominion, but by use; as the things of a lord are the servants', for sustenance, namely, or ornament, or aught else of this kind.

VERS. 34.-- At the right hand of God. In the honour wherein he is God, whose petition cannot be contemned. He maketh intercession. While daily he offers to the Father's countenance the man whom he assumed, and the grievous kind of death which he bore for us.

VERS. 35.-- Who shall separate us, etc. (CYPR.) None 499Cof these things can separate believers, etc., as far as that we also may suffer for his sake: But in all these things we overcome.

VERS. 38.-- Neither angels, nor princes, nor virtues. These orders are taken of the evil angels, and of the good if it might be done.

VERS. 39.-- Neither height, nor depth. That is, neither prosperity nor adversity, whence Solomon: Riches and poverty give me not: lest, being filled, I become a liar, or, being poor, I rob, and forswear the name of God (Prov. XXX). Many sin through height, many through need. Against this Ahaz is set forth in Isaias, who would not ask a sign either in the height or in the depth. The remedy is from Christ, who was neither lifted up by the power whereby he is equal to the Father, nor troubled at the casting out of 499Ddeath, who is a sign in the height and in the depth: lest he should either be exalted by royal power, or troubled by hardship, as it then was on account of the war of the Assyrians.

VERS. 1.-- I speak the truth. Now nothing can separate me, but once I was separated; whence now I grieve, and thus evils are now turned unto good.

I speak the truth. (AMBR.) Because he seemed to speak against the Jews, etc., as far as yet Job was the fifth of the sons of Esau, namely from Abraham, that is, a grandson of Esau.

VERS. 3.-- For my brethren. The Jews, or also for the drawing back of those who are now brethren in the faith, who are also my kinsmen: and so I sinned the more grievously.

500A(AUG.) So perfect an eminence of the Son is here declared, etc., as far as: The mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus (I Tim. II).

VERS. 6.-- But not that the word hath fallen away. The Apostle comforts his own grief. For who should bewail him who was long ago held for dead; these, foreknowing, God decreed long ago were not to be saved, being no accepter of persons. For he damns none before he sins, he crowns none before he conquers; but he has determined in his foreknowledge what the will of each shall be, out of which he is damned or crowned. Because he grieved over the Jews, he comforts himself, finding it written: that not all are to be saved, but only such as are like Isaac. In these he shows that the grace of God alone will make sons of God. But not that the word of God hath fallen away. From this, that he said that the promise 500Bof the eternal inheritance was made to the Jews, who themselves for the greater part did not believe, the word of God seemed not to have been fulfilled. To which he answers: Even if in certain men it is not fulfilled, yet in others, namely in the believing Gentiles, it has been fulfilled, who are now the true sons of Abraham. But not that it hath fallen away. As if he should say: Even though he so laboured; even though not all believe, yet the word of God has not fallen away; or, I do not say that it has fallen away. For the word of God to fall away is for the promises not to be fulfilled.

VERS. 7.-- In Isaac. That is, they are gathered in Christ, grace calling them. In Isaac they were prefigured by the promise, not those who make themselves just, but those whom God makes; these are the sons of the free woman which is above, who is our mother. The children of the flesh are of the earthly Jerusalem, which 500Cis in bondage with her children. As Isaac did not deserve that he should be promised as one to be born, so also these; but by grace alone was the adoption of sons promised and given to them.

VERS. 10.-- And not only she. Sara had a promise, but Rebecca also had a promise, having namely two sons by one conception of Isaac our father. He says "by one conception," lest the merits of the parents should seem to make a difference in those begotten, but of the father, that is, of our instructor, whom we should imitate, if we wish to be sons of God. The promise made to Sara shows that no one is saved on account of race. But this promise made to Rebecca shows that on account of no merit of his own or of his parents is anyone chosen, but by grace alone.

500DVERS. 11.-- For when they were not yet born. Rebecca had this promise: The elder shall serve the younger, that is, Esau, by persecuting Jacob, shall profit him.

VERS. 12.-- Not of works. Of future works, which were not to be good or evil, save by grace bestowed or withdrawn.

(AUG.) But if the divine judgment is said to have discerned their future manners, etc., as far as for how are those things called future, which shall be nothing?

VERS. 13.-- The elder shall serve the younger. This according to the letter: because the Idumeans, who are of Esau (who is also called Edom), were made subject to the children of Israel; but rather in this prophecy it is intended that the Jewish people, the elder, that is, the earlier in the worship of the one God, should serve the younger, that is, the later Christian people.

501AJacob I have loved, etc. In Jacob he found nothing to be loved, save the gift of his own mercy. In Esau he hated nothing, save original sin. But how is this rightly done, since they had done nothing? Because the matter is astounding, he objects to himself: What then shall we say? To will and to run is of mercy; which appears in others of the same lump, to which perdition is due.

VERS. 14.-- What then. Because without merit he chose this one and reprobated that one, shall God be called unjust? No, because he chose this one through mercy, that one he reprobated through justice. In neither of which is there iniquity; this one through mercy, because so says Moses; this one through justice, because so says the Scripture bringing in God speaking to Pharaoh.

God forbid. It is certain that none is delivered save by gratuitous 501Bmercy; none is damned save by most equitable justice. But why he should deliver this one rather than that one: let him who can search out so deep a judgment, yet let him beware of the precipice.

VERS. 15.-- I will have mercy on whom I have had mercy. That is, on him on whom I foreknow that mercy is to be shown, and who shall abide with me: this is to give to him to whom it is to be given, not to give to him to whom it is not to be given; that he may call him whom he knows will hearken; as David, who after pardon so well persevered. Saul, not heard in his prayer, did not persevere, but was turned to idols; whence he seems justly to have been reprobated by him who foreknew.

VERS. 16.-- Therefore it is not of him that willeth, etc. As though he should say: The will of man alone suffices not, if there be not also the mercy of God. To which it is said, on the contrary: 501CNeither does the mercy of God suffice, if there be not the will of man; and by this, if that was rightly said, why is not the contrary also rightly said: It is not of God that showeth mercy, but of man that willeth? It remains therefore that this be understood as rightly said, so that the whole be given to God: who both prepares the good will of man to be helped, and helps it when prepared: he goes before him that willeth [volentem; read nolentem, "him that willeth not"] that he may will, he follows after him that willeth lest he will in vain.

(AUG.) Moreover, who is so impiously foolish as to say that God [makes] the evil wills of men, etc., as far as even as out of his own mercy he bestows grace.

VERS. 17.-- I have raised up. Or, I have stirred up, or, I have preserved. (AMBR.) For this very thing I have preserved thee, etc., as far as but that, thou being hardened, I may show my power by the signs 501Dof Egypt.

VERS. 18.-- Therefore on whom he will. The merit of mercy is none; the merit of hardening is the sin of the whole condemned lump. Nor does he harden by imparting malice, but by not imparting mercy, even as neither are they worthy, which he does by a hidden equity, and one removed from human senses, because the Apostle does not open it, but wonders: O the depth of the riches.

He hardeneth. (AUG., epist. CV.) Not as though he compelled any man to sin, but only because to certain sinners he does not bestow the mercy of his justification: for this cause he is said to harden them, because he has not mercy on them, not because he impels them to sin. But he has not mercy on those to whom he judges, by a most hidden equity 502Aand one most remote from human senses, that grace is not to be given.

VERS. 19.-- Why doth he yet. Since it is certain that it is of the will of God, why is it inquired whence one is good, another evil? There is no need, because each will be such as God wills him to be, and therefore he unjustly damns one and saves another: or, why doth he complain, that is, why does anyone strive to act well, when he can do nothing save what God wills?

VERS. 20.-- O man. This not from want of a reason to be rendered, but he calls man back to himself.

VERS. 21.-- Of the same lump. So the whole lump of the human race is justly corrupted and become clay: if from it a vessel unto honour, it is mercy; if unto dishonour, it is just, because this was of nature: behold justice 502Bin those who have not time for working; but of those who have time he subjoins: what if God, willing, namely, what wouldst thou answer to God. Another unto dishonour. A vessel unto honour, but unto dishonour: if it is vile, it has the clay from itself, not from the potter.

What if God, etc. (AUG., lib. I, ad Simplicianum, quaest. II.) As if he should say: It has already been shown that even if God give nothing of good, yet he is not unjust, etc., as far as but they abused this grace.

VERS. 22.-- He endured. God endures the wicked, that he may destroy them in order; and he uses them as an instrument for the salvation of the good. For God would create none, either of angels or of men, whom he foreknew would be evil, unless he likewise knew them, for what uses of the good he would make them serviceable.

502CVERS. 23.-- That he might show. As if he should say: For this he suffers the wicked, and shows his wrath beforehand, and draws them to the knowledge of himself, that he might show upon the vessels of mercy, that is, in the elect through mercy, the riches of glory, that is, how rich and how great and glorious mercy is; for this he gives so many good things to the wicked, that he may convince them that they are justly damned, and that the faithful, for whom he has kept that same grace, may love him the more.

VERS. 25.-- As in Osee. Since it has been shown that they are sons of grace alone, he begins to prove through the prophets that these are of both peoples.

VERS. 27.-- If it shall be. Behold, the salvation of the Jews is so spoken of that the greater part is blinded.

VERS. 28, 29.-- For the word. The prophet subjoins by 502Dwhat they are made safe, namely by the word of the Gospel, that the glory of the works of the law may be excluded. For the word of the Gospel, which is called consummating, leads to perfection, and abridges all the things of the law in the one Christ: yet it is equal to the former word of the law; whence is added, in equity, that is, that nothing be wanting to justice out of all the things prefigured, or because it retains those things which are equitable, as the moral precepts; and those which it is right should be taken away, as are the figures, it cuts off. And abridging in equity. That he may save by the compendium of faith through grace, not by innumerable observances. But lest anyone doubt, the Prophet adds:

Unless the Lord of sabaoth. The Lord made the word, which was so necessary that unless there were a seed, 503Athat is, the word, etc. Or by the seed are understood the remnant to be saved, that is, the apostles and other good men, and unless the word of God had been preached through them, the nations would have perished. And this is: Unless the Lord of hosts, when he blinded the others, had left us, that is, for our profit, a seed, that is, the apostles, from whom the harvest of Christ grew.

And we had been like unto Gomorrha. He set down both, that he might note the likeness of the fault and of the penalty, as if he should say: We should be equal in penalty, because we should be like in fault.

VERS. 31.-- Israel. But Israel followed the law as it were backwards, because he never attains to the spiritual understanding. Following after justice. The law of Moses is the law of justice, if it be well understood. Or, following after the justice 503Bof the law, that is, which is of the fear of punishment, not of the love of justice, he did not attain, etc.

VERS. 32.-- Because not of faith. For he did not seek to be justified of faith, and because he did not ask justice from God, he did not believe in him who justifies the ungodly, not believing that God works in man that whereby he is justified. But whence it came about that they did not believe, he subjoins. They stumbled. After the likeness of a small stone, against which no heed is taken, Christ was apt to cause stumbling, lying hidden in humility. To which Isaias bears witness (cap. VIII). Behold, in what is manifest, I place, that is, I cause to be born, in Sion, that is, among the Jews, Christ a stone of stumbling, against which, being small, no heed is taken, and a rock of scandal, that is, one wholly crushing the wicked in the time to come, and grieving them. But Christ is called a stone of stumbling according to the state 503Cwherein he appeared here to the wicked. But a rock of scandal, according to what he shall do to the wicked in the time to come.

VERS. 33.-- And a rock of scandal. It is called a rock before the polishing, and a stone after the polishing. But the polishing of Christ was his passion, whereby he laid aside the misery of infirmity. Christ therefore before the passion was a rock of scandal, at which time the Jews were scandalized, being angry and indignant, because he made himself the Son of God. A stone through the polishing, Christ in the passion, when the same Jews most of all stumbled, and were blinded, not believing him to be God whom they saw dead.

He shall not be confounded. (AUG.) For he that shall have believed in him shall not have his own justice which is of the law, although the law be good, but shall fulfil that same law, 503Dnot by his own justice, but by that given by God. For thus he shall not be confounded.

VERS. 1.-- And supplication. For the will, that it may be moved to believe true things, suffices not of itself, unless God help it through grace, whence: No man cometh to me, unless it be given him by my Father (Joan. IV).

VERS. 2.-- For I bear them witness that. (AMBR.) He speaks of those who received not Christ, not out of envy, but out of error, to whom Peter says: I know that through ignorance you did this (Act. III). Not according to knowledge. For it is foolish to venerate the law, and to persecute the God of the law.

VERS. 3.-- For being ignorant of the justice of God. Not that 504Awhereby God is just, but that which is in man from God. They are not subject to the justice of God. This is the justice of God, which is established not in the precept of the law whereby fear is struck in, but in the help of the grace of Christ.

VERS. 4.-- The end. Not consuming, but perfecting: it perfects therefore justice through faith without the works of the law. Christ. Justice is from Christ; because if it were through the written or the natural law, and not by the faith of Christ, then Christ would die for nothing.

Unto justice. Not human, but divine. For there is a human and a divine: of the human there, Moses; of the divine there: But that which is of, etc.

The Scripture. In Numbers and in Leviticus it is thus had: He that shall do these things shall live in them.

VERS. 5.-- He shall live in it. He has this reward, 504Bnamely that he be not punished by that death. But it is no great justice to fear, nor has it merit with God.

VERS. 6.-- That is, to bring Christ down. That is, to deny that Christ has ascended.

VERS. 8.-- The word is nigh. That is, it is useful, or there is nothing unfitting either to say or to believe. Or nigh, because it is not far from the nature of minds: and by the manner of speaking, that which is said to us that we may believe.

This is the word. (AUG., Tract. 80, in Joannem.) Of which the Lord says: For you are clean by reason of the word which I have spoken to you, etc., as far as for in the word itself one thing is the sound that passes, another the power that remains.

504CVERS. 9.-- That if thou confess. (AUG.) Behold the praise of faith and its reward. The praise of faith is, if thou shalt have believed that Jesus is Lord, etc., as far as who goes before it in a resurrection suited to itself, that is, in justification.

VERS. 10.-- With the heart we believe. Other things a man can do unwilling, but he cannot believe save willing.

Confession. (AUG., in Psal. XXX, concione III.) To confess is to say what is in the heart, etc., as far as because he so believes, so also he ought in the mouth, that he may so preach.

VERS. 12.-- Who call upon him. He that prays calls upon; but this assuredly he cannot do, unless he first believe. They therefore who call upon him not only believe, but also pray, so that after anyone's mind has believed it may not cease to ask that 504Dwhich God promised to them that watch with the whole heart, because to believe gives the remission of sins. But to call upon obtains the promises of God.

VERS. 14.-- How then shall they call upon, etc. It being proved that this is taken of both peoples, he shows through what, namely through the mission made to both, which he who shall not have received is inexcusable. Invocation saves, therefore one must believe: because, how, etc. Or how shall they believe, etc. As if he should say: They will not believe, unless they hear. For neither did anyone of old believe who did not in some manner hear, either inwardly or outwardly. But he says that to believe is of hearing, to hear of preaching, to preach of the mission of God; so that the whole comes down from the fount of grace. But preaching truly 505Ais of a mission, because God, who knows how to use evil unto good, sent even false men that announce good things. Sometimes also he sends the evil to the evil in wrath, that is, he permits evil men to preach to evil men for the punishment of the same, that by turns through themselves, as is just, they may perish.

(AUG.) What the Apostle says: How shall they believe him whom they have not heard? he said of the Gentiles, etc., as far as that preachers of Christ are to be sent.

VERS. 15.-- But how shall they preach unless they be sent? Behold, it appears that preachers were sent to the Gentiles also. How beautiful. Because they enlighten the world, wherein it appears that they were sent by God, otherwise they could not do this. Peace. Reconciliation between people and people, the wall of the legal rite among the Jews, and of idolatry among the Gentiles, being broken down. And between God, 505Bjustifying the ungodly through faith, and men believing in him. Of them that bring glad tidings of good things. Peace upon peace, because the kingdom of God also is peace.

VERS. 16.-- For Isaias saith, etc. God, being foreknowing, foretold the unbelief of the Jews, but he did not make it; nor would he have foreknown their evils, unless they were to have them. So also he blinds, which is by forsaking, not however by doing, and the will deserved this. If it be said that the Jews cannot believe because Isaias foretold it, I say that they cannot, because they will not. What God foreknew, he foretold; but he did not make it. They cannot, while they are proud, while they are such as to attribute all things to their own strength, and to deny that divine help is necessary to them for working well.

VERS. 17.-- Faith is of, etc. Although God teaches within, 505Cyet the herald announces without. Through the word. That is, through the grace of Christ, who sends us teachers of the evangelical word. For unless something be said, it can neither be heard nor believed.

VERS. 18.-- And indeed. Or equidem, that is, assuredly, and so they are inexcusable, as David shows in the Psalms, saying: Their sound hath gone forth into all the earth. (AUG., epist. 80, quae est ad Hesych.) This was not fulfilled in the time of the Apostles, etc., as far as so also that: You shall be witnesses to me unto the uttermost part of the earth (Act. I).

VERS. 19.-- But I say: Hath not Israel. He proved that all had heard, and so that the Jews had heard. But because they might both have heard and not have known, he affirms that they also knew. Hath known. Israel is said to have known the doctrine of the Gospel and the coming of Christ, because he could not gainsay it 505Dby reason or by authority; but he did not truly know it, so that it should sit well in their mind. Unto emulation. There is envy in the Jews, while the Gentiles call their God their own, and say that the promises and their law and the prophets pertain to themselves. Into a nation that is not. The Gentiles were not formerly called a holy nation, because they were without law; or now they are not a nation, because they do not live after the manner of the Gentiles. Into a foolish nation. "Into," that is, against a foolish nation, that is, against the Gentiles who had not known the true God.

VERS. 21.-- All the day. All the time in which I dwelt with them, and enlightened the world, I amply showed my works and affections to the Jews; or in a part of the whole day, on the cross I spread out my hands, etc. I spread out my hands. 506AAs if he should say: I showed to the Jews things more ample. For indeed he denied them no benefit; for he raised up their dead, he cured their diverse infirmities. But he is said to spread out his hands who bountifully bestows benefits upon them that ask.

VERS. 1.-- I say then. Because he had confuted the Jews by so many authorities, the gentiles might insult them, saying that they had been wholly cast off.

VERS. 2.-- He foreknew. For he predestined he has set he foreknew. For so it ought to be taken, as is plain from what follows; and he said he foreknew for this reason, lest the Jews should again be proud from that whereby he said that they were not cast off, and were the people of God.

(AUG.) Or will anyone dare to say that God did not foreknow to whom he was to give that they should believe, or 506Bwhom he was to give to his Son, that of them he should lose none? And if he foreknew these things, assuredly he foreknew his own benefits, by which he deigns to set us free. This predestination of the saints is nothing else than the foreknowledge, that is, and the preparation, of God's benefits, by which they are most certainly set free, whosoever are set free.

Or know ye not. As if he should say: so the Lord has not cast off the remnant in this time, but has saved them; just as in the time of Elias he reserved many to himself, when Elias seemed to himself to be alone; and if he was ignorant that others also besides himself were reserved, it is no wonder if these are ignorant.

VERS. 4.-- Seven thousand. By the number seven universality is designated, by the number a thousand perfection.

VERS. 5.-- So then. As if he should say: Then there were 506Cmany, even though Elias knew it not. Therefore so, that is, thus secretly; or so, that is, through the same grace.

VERS. 6.-- Otherwise grace is now no more grace. That is, if they have been made safe otherwise (which cannot come to pass save by the grace of God), then that grace itself will now not be grace, but a debt.

VERS. 7.-- What then? Having heard that the remnant were made safe by grace, and not of works, what then is to be said? But the election hath obtained it. The election is of grace, not of merits. But the blinding is of merits. For they were blinded because they would not believe, just as those, because they would, believed. Mercy therefore and judgment were wrought by God in the wills themselves, since to those he applies grace through mercy, but permits these to be blinded through judgment. 506DFor whosoever, when he had understood, would not believe, ought to obtain what he wills, namely that henceforth he cannot believe. In their own will therefore they were helped, malice not being sent in, but grace giving way; so that because, knowing the true, they said it was false, henceforth they should not understand what is true. This the envy of an evil will merits; it is not so with those who do this out of error.

VERS. 8.-- He gave them the spirit of compunction. This signifies an evil compunction, because it often happens that even a good thing is troublesome to a man, as the doctrine of Christ was to the Pharisees; and so he calls the envying mind the spirit of compunction, whereby they envied the doctrine of Christ.

507AUnto this present day. That is, as long as it can be called the present day, that is, unto the present day of all to whom this writing shall come.

VERS. 9.-- A table. That is, Scripture: of them, that is, which was first offered to them, and set before them, because they take delight in its carnal observances; or, before them, because if they were willing to attend to reason, they could understand. For a snare, etc. Just as they themselves offered me vinegar, so let iniquity become a snare to them, because they knew iniquity, and persisted in it. For a snare, etc. The Scripture, which to them that understand is bread, ensnares while it is ill understood and for its sake the preaching of Christ is spurned. Likewise the Scripture of the law was the cause of captivity, while by zeal for it they slew Christ, and in that captivity it was to them the cause of stumbling 507Band of reproach, and afterwards it will be the cause of eternal damnation, which is specially called the retribution of God.

VERS. 10.-- Let the eyes be darkened. Because without cause they did not see, let it be given them not to see. Let the eyes be darkened. These words are said not by the wish of one desiring, but by the office of one foretelling.

VERS. 11.-- I say then, Have they. Because I say that they are blinded on the authority of the prophets, do you think that they have fallen irrecoverably and without profit? as if he should say, No. But their fall profits, and they can be restored, lest anyone despise them.

Have they so stumbled, that they should fall? (AUG.) He does not say this because they have not fallen, etc., as far as but let them rather beware lest, while they are proud, they fall.

Salvation. While, divided throughout the world, they are for a testimony 507Cthat the prophecies concerning Christ are not feigned. That they may emulate them. It can be taken thus: that the Jews may imitate the gentiles in good. This has often been done, and will be done more fully at the end of the world, when the Jews shall follow the Christians in the end of Christ. For then the hand of Moses shall be called back into his bosom, then our Moses shall return to his mother and to his brethren. It can also be understood thus, that the gentiles may emulate the Jews, that is, may believe, just as they also believed. As if the gentiles were moved with the emulation of God concerning the evil works of the Jews.

VERS. 12.-- But if, etc. As if he should say: I have said that the offense of the Jews profits; and if it is so, then their conversion will profit more. How much more. That is, if God turns their evil into good, that is, into the riches of the world, much more their good, when at the end their fulness 507Dconverted shall enrich the gentiles by doctrine and example. Wherein he shows their fall to be neither useless nor irrecoverable.

VERS. 13.-- As long as. (ANSELM.) Although I be the apostle of the gentiles, yet I will honor my ministry by adding over and above what I owe, so as to labor also concerning the Jews, making the attempt; if it does not succeed by this way, I will approach another, which I would not do if I despaired of their salvation.

(CHRYS.) Again he busies himself to free himself from an evil suspicion. He seems indeed to rebuke those who were of the gentiles, and to humble their minds; yet little by little he plucks at the Jew.

VERS. 16.-- But if the first-fruit. I have said that the taking up 508Aof them will be very profitable; and lest ye say, ye gentiles, that this cannot come to pass, as though the whole race were repudiated, I say that if the first-fruit, that is, the few taken up from among them, as the apostles and the other disciples, are holy. And the mass. That is, the race can be sanctified. And if the root. That is, the patriarchs, from whom the saints draw the sap of faith. And the branches. Who have grown up of their race, founded in their faith.

VERS. 17.-- When thou wert a wild olive, being grafted in, etc. (ANSELM.) Let us see how the Lord himself also foretells the grafting in of the wild olive and the breaking of the branches, etc., as far as which the Lord foretold was to be done

A partaker. In the hope of the promise: this against custom. For a good tree is wont to be grafted into one that is not good, here one not good into a good one.

508BVERS. 18.-- Boast not, etc. (ANSELM.) The gentiles now believing in Christ were raising themselves up against the Jews, because they had crucified Christ, whereas from them too there came the other wall to the corner-stone, and therefore the Apostle restrains them. Boast not, he says, etc., that is, thou art not stable if thou destroyest those through whom thou standest.

VERS. 19.-- Thou sayest then, they were broken off. As if he should say: if it is not lawful to boast against those who stand, yet it is lawful against those who were cast off for the cause of my grafting in; which the Apostle removes, thus: Thou sayest well, because it is true that they were broken off because of unbelief; thou standest by faith, that is, not by thy merit, but by the grace of God; and therefore be not proud, lest thou too be broken off through pride, as they through unbelief. Thou art not stable, if thou destroyest those through whom thou standest. He is easily deceived who rejoices in others' evils.

508CVERS. 20.-- Thou standest by faith. It is God's benefit that thou standest, not thy merit. But fear. Lest thou lose the benefit of so great a grace, and fall into punishment. For chaste is the fear when the soul takes heed lest God, being forsaken, forsake her.

VERS. 22.-- If thou continue in goodness. If thou shalt have wrought things worthy of God's kindness, for neither is faith alone enough for thee. But the severity of God. In that he spared them not, because he found them unworthy of the virtue of the fathers.

VERS. 24.-- Contrary to nature. That is said to be contrary to nature which is contrary to the custom of nature, as if a shoot should bear the fruit of the root. Yet God does nothing contrary to nature, because that is nature which he does. The olive. By the olive is here understood the faith of the Fathers.

508DVERS. 25.-- For I would not have you ignorant, etc. (AUG.) Defenders of the law, handlers of the law, doctors of the law, understanders of the law, they crucified the author of the law. O blindness! It is that very blindness which in part has fallen upon Israel, that Christ might be crucified, and the fulness of the gentiles might enter in.

VERS. 26.-- Ungodliness. That is, unbelief, or the cultivation of legal observance. For the worship of the Jews, from the time the coming of Christ was known, is ungodliness.

VERS. 27.-- When I shall take away. This will be at the end, when by the preaching of Elias and Enoch the Jews shall be converted, whence by Malachias: I will send you Elias the Thesbite, who shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the sons, and the hearts of the sons to the father (Mal. IV); that the sons may understand as the fathers, that is, as the prophets understood.

509AVERS. 28.-- (AUG.) According to the Gospel, etc. Or thus: then they would be converted; but now they are indeed enemies of Christ, and indeed ours. Again of themselves, that is, of their own fault. But this is according to the Gospel and for your sakes, that is, unto the profit of the Gospel and your own.

Enemies for the sake of. He shows that this comes about from God's disposition. For of themselves they can be at enmity, which profits the Gospel, God using evils unto good, so that while they do against the will of God, the will of God is fulfilled, wisely disposing all things. For the sake of the fathers. The elect are beloved for the sake of the fathers, to whom these things were promised; because they are not called with that calling with which many are called who are not foreknown, who nevertheless perish, of which it is said: Many are called, but few chosen (Marc. XX); but 509Bwith that with which the elect are called, which is without change: because he who hears from the Father comes to the Son, who loses nothing of all that is given; but whosoever perishes, was not thence; whence: They went out from us, but they were not of us (I Joan. II).

According to the election and for the sake of the fathers (Aug., lib. de Praedest. sanc., c. 16.) They are to be saved: because the gifts, that is, the promises, etc., as far as because they do not see them with grief.

VERS. 30.-- For as. That is, by what reason God once permitted you not to believe, namely lest you should have cause of being proud after you were converted.

VERS. 31.-- That they also. Having learned by experience that salvation is not through the law, but through grace: that so they also may obtain mercy through humility.

509CVERS. 32.-- He hath concluded. That is, he permitted them to be concluded. Here he seems in some manner to expound the mystery. For God hath concluded all things in the unbelieving, that they, confounded by repenting of the bitterness of their unbelief, converted by believing to the sweetness of God's mercy, might remain the more humble, so that both the grace of the gift might be most welcome, and they might cry out: How great is the multitude of thy sweetness, O Lord (Psal. XXX.) Of all. That is, of the Jews and of the gentiles, not that he will damn none, which some have falsely supposed.

VERS. 33.-- O the depth, etc. He had set before it a sentence of wondrous profundity, and, struck as it were with horror at that profundity, he cries out O the depth, etc. For we have a very small understanding for examining the justice 509Dof the judgments of God, for examining the gratuitous grace rendered with no merits going before. Nor does it move us so much that grace is bestowed upon the unworthy, as that it is denied to others equally unworthy.

(AUG., lib. de Spirit, et lit., c. 36 in fine.) I know that, as there is no impossibility, so neither is there iniquity with God, etc., as far as that he might first permit them to be concluded in unbelief.

(ID.) Sometimes the grace of God is bestowed upon the sons of unbelievers, etc., as far as and if not in this life, certainly in the other, etc.

His ways. That is, the fulfillments of his disposing, because not even in the carrying out can what he has disposed be known.

Counsellor. The counsellor of the Father is his only-begotten 510ASon, who is also called the Angel of great counsel. But of men and of angels none was a counsellor to him.

VERS. 35.-- Or who hath first. Although we cannot know the judgments of God, at least this is certain, that of grace alone he gives good things, and not from any preceding merit.

(AUG.) God has been made a debtor, not by receiving anything from us, etc., as far as and this thou hast done, who hast helped them that labored, etc.

VERS. 36.-- For of him, etc. Of, through, in, denote the distinction of the persons; but the same pronoun him repeated, the identity of substance; and because he is such, the glory is to him, not to the just themselves.

(AUG., lib. de Natura boni, cap. 27, Ex ipso.) Not all things are of his own substance, etc., as far as he willed each one of these 510Bthree to be referred to each one of them.

All things. When we have heard that all things are of God, we ought assuredly to understand all natures, and all things that naturally are; for neither are those sins of him which vitiate nature, which are born of the will of them that sin.

VERS. 1.-- I beseech you. Thus far he has sufficiently humbled both parties, and has annulled the glory drawn from their former state; now, the business being as it were finished, he thereafter turns to morality. I beseech you. Thus far, lest the one should be proud against the other; from here, that the one should labor for the other's profit. I beseech you by, etc. That is, by the apostolate mercifully committed to me by God, or 510Cthe mercy wrought and shown to you by God.

A victim, etc. (AUG., lib. X, de Civit., cap. 6.) A true sacrifice is every work that is done, etc, as far as he adds, saying: But be ye reformed in the newness of your mind, etc.

VERS. 2.-- Be not conformed. A general prohibition. But be ye reformed. A regular command. There continence, here justice. The one pertains to not coveting, this to loving; the one to turning aside from evil, this to doing good. For by not coveting we are stripped of the oldness, and by loving we are clothed with the newness. Be ye reformed. Because in Adam the image of God was in part lost, so that it may begin to be reformed by him by whom it was formed. For it cannot reform itself as it was able to deform itself.

510DVERS. 3.-- For I say. This is the sacrifice of Christians, that the many should be one body in Christ. For this is shown in the Sacrament of the altar to the faithful by the vow of the Church, which is signified in that thing which she offers. For as bread is made of many grains, so the holy Church consists of the many members of the faithful, who rejoice together in the participation of their Creator; by whose gift they are holy and are one, which is also shown in what follows, where he says: We being many are one body in Christ (I Cor. X). Which cannot come to pass unless they be wise unto sobriety, which is here enjoined. To be wise unto sobriety. That is, that it should not go beyond the bounds of justice, that which may be useful to us alone, and may hurt no one.

511AThe measure of faith. According to the faith which God distributes by measure; this is the faith that works through charity, without which no man's works are to be reckoned anything. To Christ the Spirit was not given by measure, but to all the rest it is given, and being given is added to; whence John says of Christ: For God doth not give the Spirit by measure, to the rest it is divided, not indeed the Spirit, but his gifts.

VERS. 4.-- For as in one. (AUG.) No one will be able to be just so long as he has been separated from the unity of this body, etc., as far as but that they may possess them with the piety of using them well.

VERS. 5, 6.-- And every one members one of another, having, etc. To this end having differing goods. Or: we are severally members, therefore let this be done in the differing 511Bgifts; and what those graces are from the diversity of which we are called members, and in what manner in them we ought to serve one another in turn, he opens, saying: Whether prophecy according to the proportion of faith, or ministry, etc. Having: let us be members of others, that we may prophesy to them. I say having according to the proportion of faith, because prophecy is given according as their faith, or the faith of the hearers, requires. Note that in the enumeration of the graces he begins from prophecy, because the first proof that our faith is reasonable is that believers, having received the Spirit, prophesied.

VERS. 8.-- He that showeth mercy. This showing of mercy is the daily medicine for daily wounds, even though they be the lighter ones; yet judgment without mercy shall be done to him that doth not mercy (Jac. II), and this is assuredly just, 511Cthat it be forgiven to him that forgives and given to him that gives. But whosoever, as being over-just and secure, awaits judgment without mercy, provokes wrath against himself. This mercy is manifold, namely to pardon him that sins, to succor him that is oppressed, etc.; and therefore he subjoins concerning mercy, setting down one member of it when another member has been set before, but where he that giveth, in simplicity. Simplicity excludes hypocrisy, cheerfulness shows joy, and reliance upon the hope of what is to come.

VERS. 11.-- Not slothful. Cursed is he that does the work of God negligently; the slothful man is without hope in the divine converse. And therefore, that the cold of sloth may be driven off, Be ye fervent, etc.

Fervent in spirit. (THEOD.) He called grace the Spirit, 511Detc., as far as for this he said. Instant in prayer. That is, doing this assiduously.

Serving the Lord, etc. As if he should say: Although I have said that ye should be fervent in spirit, yet do not thrust in the words of God everywhere and unseasonably, but be fervent with the opportunity of the time, so that ye may speak the words of faith in fit places, to fit persons, and at a fit time. Fervent. The Spirit is fire, with which charity is fervent, whence the Lord says: I am come to send fire on the earth, and what will I, but that it burn? (Luc. XII.)

VERS. 12.-- Rejoicing in hope. Being certain of things to come they rejoice, and therefore are patient in tribulation.

VERS. 16.-- Consenting. Which is not done with the mouth only, because then is there true humility, if it is not in the tongue 512Aalone, lest, presuming upon themselves, they should not suffer with others, but reproach them.

VERS. 19.-- Give place. He does not command that the saints should be unwilling to be avenged by God, which the saints cry out for in the Apocalypse, not indeed for the glutting of hatred, but because it is written: The just shall rejoice when he shall see the revenge. But he commands that they, not avenging themselves, give place to the wrath of God, who says: Revenge to me, and I will repay. If therefore a good man wills that God punish his enemy, this is not to render evil for evil. Since therefore both the just man and the evil man wish to be avenged by God on their enemies, wherein are they distinguished? The good man desires rather that his enemy be corrected than punished, and when God punishes he is not delighted at his enemy's pain, but that pleases him which pleases the Lord also, because he 512Bloves him, and it is God whom he follows in this: Who raineth upon the just and the unjust (Prov. XXV); and yet even in this world he more sharply reproves the obstinate and at the end will damn them, to whom accordingly vengeance is to be reserved. He gives place to the wrath of his adversary who permits his adversary to do what he will.

VERS. 20.-- But if he hunger. Note the strangeness of the conjunction but. For it is to be carried on as though neither conjunction had been interposed. Or it can also be read thus, so that neither conjunction is superfluous, as if he should say, not only do ye not defend yourselves, but if, etc.

VERS. 1.-- Let every soul. (AUG. Expositio prop. 720 ex epist. ad Rom.) What the Apostle says here he admonishes most rightly, etc., as far as yet let every man 512Cbe subject to him that is above him.

For there is no power. Power is from God; but the things that are from God are ordained; therefore power is ordained. And so he that resists the power resists the ordinance of God. Of a good power it is plain, that God perfected it. Of an evil one it can reasonably be seen, since both the good are purged by it, and the evil are damned, and it is itself cast down into the worse. And know that by the name of power there is sometimes understood the power itself which is given to someone by God, sometimes the very man having the power; which let the diligent reader distinguish.

And those that are, are ordained of God. That is, reasonably disposed by God, whence: God casteth not away the mighty, since he himself also is mighty (Job. XXXVI).

(GREG.) For he desires to imitate God who the summit 512Dof power, etc., as far as because it is by no means a just power, but a depraved act, that is condemned.

VERS. 2.-- But he that resisteth. (AUG.) What if he command what is not lawful? Here indeed he shall despise the power, by fearing a greater power; therefore if the emperor command one thing, and God another, that one being despised, God is to be obeyed.

VERS. 3.-- Princes. The Apostle says that those are princes who are created for the correcting of life and the forbidding of adverse things, having the image of God, that the rest may be under one. They are not a terror to the good, etc. If the prince is good, he does not punish the well-doer, but loves him. But if he is evil, he does not harm the good man, but purges him. The evil subject therefore ought to fear, because princes are appointed 513Athat they may punish evils. Thou shalt have praise from it. If it is just, by its own praising; if unjust, by its affording thee an occasion of praise.

VERS. 4.-- For he is God's minister. Therefore rulers are given, that evils may not be done. An avenger unto wrath. That is, for the avenging of God's wrath, or an avenger for the showing forth of God's wrath; because this punishment indicates that those who persist in evil are to be punished more grievously.

VERS. 6.-- For therefore. Ye ought to be subject, because for this too, that is, for the showing of subjection, ye render tribute, which is a sign of subjection. He does not say, ye pay, but ye render, as to men who will make return; because they make return while they fight for their country, and while they conduct judgments, ye render, serving God. For by this, that ye give them tribute, ye serve God, because they are ministers 513Bof God. Or ye render tribute, because they are ministers of God, that the good may be praised, the evil punished.

VERS. 7.-- Tribute. Or tribute is what is paid to lords. A toll is what is conveyed to the lord's house.

VERS. 8.-- To no man anything. Peace toward all, love among brethren. For otherwise they are not truly brethren. That ye love. Mention is made here of charity, because it avails unto this humility. For charity alone is that which, even when repaid, always keeps its debtor. For it is repaid when it is bestowed, but it is owed even if it has been repaid, because there is no time at which it is not to be bestowed. Nor when it is repaid is it lost, but rather it is multiplied by repaying; for it is repaid by having, not by lacking, as money which cannot be repaid unless it be had, nor be had unless it be repaid; nay rather, when it is repaid 513Cby a man, it grows in the man; and so much the greater is acquired, the more men it is repaid to. He loveth his neighbor. Since there are two precepts of charity, one is often put for both, because neither is God loved without the neighbor, nor the neighbor without God, nor can be. The love of the neighbor appears in deeds, the love of God lies more hidden, and therefore he sets down this one more particularly, of which the Lord says: A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, where that greater commandment of the love of God seems to be passed over. But by those who understand well, each is found in the other; because he who loves God cannot despise him whom God commands to be loved, and he who loves his neighbor holily and spiritually, what does he love in him but God? His neighbor, hath fulfilled the law. Every man must be understood 513Dby neighbor, because there is no one with whom evil is to be wrought. He therefore who loves men ought to love them either because they are just, or that they may be just. For so also he ought to love himself, namely, either because he is just, or that he may be just. For he who loves himself otherwise loves himself unjustly, because he loves himself to this end, that he may be unjust, therefore to this end, that he may be evil: therefore he no longer loves himself; for he who loves iniquity hates his own soul.

VERS. 11.-- And this knowing. Namely, that it is the hour; or, as certain books have it: knowing this time, namely of grace. Now from the time when we have had love; it is the hour, that is, the opportunity, but a brief one. To rise from sleep. Sleep is negligence or ignorance. For now. Causes interposed, why we ought to 514Arise. Is nearer. He that works well is near to eternal life. For baptism is unto pardon, a good life unto the crown. Or nearer, because we are more nigh to death.

VERS. 12.-- The night is past. Again it is shown why they ought to rise: because the night of unbelief and ignorance is past, that is, has been; but now it is not, whose memory admonishes, that ye may beware. But the day, that is, eternal blessedness, is at hand, since sins are remitted, since ye are just through grace. The night is the old man, who passed away in baptism; the day is Christ the sun of justice, by whose light they have learned the truth, that they may know what is to be done. The works of darkness. Evil works, which have come out of the darkness of ignorance, or love the darkness, and lead to the darkness

514BVERS. 13.-- Not in rioting. Note that in these things the Romans are touched; and therefore they have no right of boasting.

(AUG.) But of these diseases pride is the mother, and the greediness of the human mind, which also often begets hypocrisy; this is not resisted, unless by frequent testimonies of the divine books fear and charity be struck in.

VERS. 1.-- Now him that is weak. It belongs to a perfect faith to distinguish no food, nor to think it unclean, because all things are clean to the clean. But certain weak ones judged that some things were to be abstained from, and so there was contention among the Romans; whence he enjoins that such be taken up, not cast off, but by bearing with them, by example and by word, to be raised up 514Cto faith. And if it is unknown with what mind anyone does a thing, not to dispute about it. Not in disputes. He is not to be condemned whose thought is not open, or of whom we know not what sort he will afterward be.

VERS. 2.-- He that is weak. He is weak who distinguishes foods, thinking some clean, others unclean, because the Jews were forbidden to eat; and he says this man is to be left to his own judgment, lest he eat with scruple. Or, although the faith be perfect which believes all things lawful, yet let the weak man, prone to a fall, who is easily laid low by the assault of lust, eat herbs, that is, thin and dry foods, which are not the fuel of vices, and let him abstain from those things by which lust is stirred up. For the richness of flesh-meats and delicious feasts provoke the body to lust.

514DVERS. 3.-- He that eateth. Above he enjoined that we should not dispute about the thoughts of others, here he enjoins that we should not despise them.

Let him not judge. (AUG., lib. II de Ser. Dom. in monte.) Judgment is to be made of manifest things, not of hidden things, etc., as far as whatsoever human foods indifferently to be taken.

VERS. 4.-- To his own Lord he standeth. Concerning the unknown heart of another's servant thou hast not to judge, but his own Lord, to whose honor he that stands, stands; to whom belongs also the fall of him that falls, who can raise up or judge. He standeth, or falleth, he therefore says: because it is ambiguous; perhaps he stands who is thought to fall. He standeth or falleth. By this he shows that he does not know with what mind that man conducts himself in doubtful matters. But he shall stand. Here he intimates that ambiguous things 515Awe ought to turn to the better part, and to wish rather the safety than the death of the accused, and to have hope of good in the future, even if it be otherwise in the present. But he shall stand. Because neither if he eats is he guilty, nor if he does not eat, provided he does this out of devotion.

VERS. 5.-- For one. Above he said that some eat all things, others not all; and speaking of the kinds of foods he says this, that some abstain at every time, others at some certain time, and he says that either may rightly be done. In his own sense. That is, let him be left to his own judgment, lest, having suffered scandal, he withdraw from charity, which is the mother of all virtues.

VERS. 6.-- He that regardeth. In his own sense I say, as one abounding: because he that regardeth a day, whether every day, or a day interposed, regardeth it unto the Lord. And he that eateth, eateth unto the Lord. 515BThat is, unto the honor of the Lord, whose created things he believes to be all clean, and because, being about to serve him, he is sustained by them.

VERS. 7.-- For none of us liveth to himself. For he who is bridled by the law lives not to himself, but to God, who gave the law. If there were no law, each man would live to himself. To himself. But unto the Lord, by whose judgment he is damned or crowned; or, to himself, that is, unto his own praise, but unto God's. For as of his greatness there is no end, so of our praise there will be no end. For when we shall have died in this flesh, we shall not cease to praise God. And according to this he treats of the faithful only. Or to himself, that is, to be judged by himself, but by the Lord: according to this it is taken of both the good and the evil.

VERS. 10.-- Before the tribunal. This is said from a likeness: for the tribunal is the seat of the judge, which is placed on high, 515Cthat the judge may be seen by all and himself from the eminent place may be able to behold all. So also Christ will sit as it were on a tribunal, because he will be seen by all, and he himself will see the consciences of all, and will judge their causes.

VERS. 13.-- Let us not therefore any more. Let us not usurp to ourselves what does not pertain to us. Let us not reprehend those things which we know not with what mind they are done; or even if they are open, let us not so reprehend them as to despair of their soundness. For in these two things judgment is rash, and it is either pride or lack of evidence, whence it is said: Judge not, and ye shall not be judged (Luc. VI).

VERS. 14.-- I know and am confident. As if he should say: I say, Lay ye no stumbling-block before your brethren. But I do not say a stumbling-block or a scandal because the food is unclean; 515Dbecause I know by this, that there is confidence in Jesus, who after he came loosed us from the law. He puts common for unclean, as drawn from the vessels which before were common to all uses, of which some, afterward dedicated to the sacrifices, were called no longer common, but holy; or it is drawn from the Jews, because the Jews themselves were called the proper people of God, but all others common and unclean.

VERS. 16.-- Let not then our good be blasphemed. Because he that has good works, if he be reprehended in the least matter, his good is obscured, and his good begins to be blasphemed on account of the evil. Whence Ezechiel: The justice of the just shall not profit him, if he shall have erred (Ezech. XXXIII). Let not then our good be blasphemed. Eating, good in itself, 516Ais blasphemable while it harms others: and because it harms, abstain, because food is not the cause of the kingdom of God.

VERS. 17.-- For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink. Not the use of foods, but concupiscence is to be bridled. It matters not what foods, or how much, a man takes for the fitness of men and of his own person and for the necessity of his own health, but how easily and with how glad a mind he does without them, when it is either fitting or necessary to do without them.

Joy in the Holy Ghost. For he that, etc. Not indeed in feasts, as many are wont, but in the Holy Ghost this joy arises out of brotherly peace; as in dispute there is anger, where the Spirit is not, because he is in the peaceable alone; by whose grace also these three are in a man: justice, peace and joy, which in these Romans 516Bwere not

VERS. 18.-- Pleaseth God, and is approved of men. According as the joy is in the Holy Ghost. But he is held approved of men according to justice, and to peace also, because dispute begets discord; therefore, rash judgments being dismissed, let us follow after the things that are of peace, not of discord, and that are of edification, that the rest may be edified, or that those already edified may be preserved toward one another, the Jew toward the gentile, and the gentile toward the Jew.

VERS. 21.-- Is offended. Disturbed, not knowing what he should hold. He is offended who departs from the right faith.

VERS. 22.-- Blessed. He calls him blessed who does nothing other than what he approves as useful, but he judges that man to be condemned by his own judgment who does not do what he says he ought to do.

516CVERS. 23.-- But all. Yet not everything that is done with faith is good, because the ignorance which comes of fault does harm. The whole life of unbelievers is sin, because everyone who lives or acts unfaithfully sins vehemently, and nothing is good without the highest good, where the knowledge of eternal truth is lacking. There is false virtue even in the best morals. Works which seem praiseworthy are, apart from faith, such as great strength and a most swift running off the road. Is not of faith. Our faith wills that a man do that which he well understands is to be done, and it is sin which is done otherwise than as it has been approved.

VERS. 5.-- To be of one mind. As if he should say: Unless ye be of the same mind, ye will not be able to honor God.

516DVERS. 8.-- Of the circumcision. That is, of the Jews, to whom he came bodily; whence: I am not sent but to the sheep that are lost of the house of Israel (Matth. XV). For the truth. He did not cast off the Jews, to whom truth belongs properly, and mercy to the gentiles, to whom no promise had been made. The promises. For he had promised to Abraham: In thy seed shall all nations be blessed (Gen. XXII). And to David: Of the fruit of thy womb I will set upon thy throne (Psalm. CXXXI). And likewise Jacob said: There shall rise a star out of Jacob (Num. XXIV).

VERS. 9.-- I will confess. But confession is not only of sins, but also of praise.

VERS. 12.-- There shall be a root of Jesse. And of this root shall be he that shall rise up, etc. Jesse is the root, David the tree, 517Awhich by the branch, that is, Mary, brought forth the fruit, that is, Christ.

VERS. 13.-- And with peace. That ye may be able to rejoice, may he give peace and concord toward one another; and this will be, if the faith be sound. That ye may abound. That is, that by having these things ye may be the more certain of eternal blessedness, and may abound in the virtue of the Holy Ghost, that is, in the fortitude of good working, which is given through the Holy Ghost.

VERS. 14.-- I am sure. Lest the Apostle should seem to understand them all to be discordant and unwise for correcting, he removes this, in that he begins for this end, that he may admonish the more perfect concerning the correction of the lesser; and thence he sets himself before them as an example, who labors for others, and there is need that these should do this, since he himself, hindered by other things, cannot come to them. Filled with all wisdom. By this praise he provokes them 517Bto better things, after the manner of one exhorting. Whence he does not say to teach, but to admonish; as if he should say, that which is known, but escapes the mind. For that is wont to be brought to mind which, although it is known, sometimes escapes the mind, or is held negligently.

VERS. 15.-- Because of the grace. He does not write rashly; but as the apostle of the gentiles he dares to write to all the nations by the authority delivered to him through grace.

VERS. 17.-- I have therefore. So also ye, if ye labor for the brethren. He says this for this reason, that he may prove that he can do nothing less than the apostles who had been with Christ.

VERS. 20.-- Not where he was named, etc. Because he knew that false apostles and others taught false things under the name of Christ, which afterward it was a labor of the greatest kind to correct; therefore he was careful to go before them, and to deliver the truth whole, where Christ had not yet been announced; which 517Che proves by the testimony of the prophet.

VERS. 21.-- And they that have not heard, etc. That the understanding of the word of God might be true and inviolable, he hastened to imbue the nations with the truth.

VERS. 26.-- For they have approved. To works of this kind he invites the Romans, because he who lives by the mercy of God ought to be dutiful toward his fellow-brother. Toward the poor. These gave themselves wholly to the divine services, caring for nothing worldly, they gave to the faithful an example of good conversation.

VERS. 30.-- That ye help. Many least ones, while they are gathered together of one mind, become great, and it is impossible that the prayers of many should not obtain. If therefore they desire to see him, let them pray that they may receive him delivered, with the joy of charity; whence there follows that I may be delivered.

517DVERS. 31.-- Acceptable. That they, understanding his charity toward them, may of one mind with him give thanks to God. For it is a great advancement to him by whose ministry many, being made glad, praise God.

VERS. 33.-- Now the God of peace. Christ, who says: My peace I give unto you, and my peace I leave unto you (Joan. XIV); who is with his own even to the consummation of the world, so may he be with you also; for he it is who says: I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world (Matth. XXVIII).

VERS. 1.-- And I commend unto you. Henceforth the Apostle sets before them many just men, whom they ought to believe 518Aat Rome, as if he should say: Do ye so as I have said, and imitate these. Phoebe. Namely, Phoebe was a most wealthy and most noble woman, who sustained by her own substance the Church in the place which is called Cenchris. And she at that time set out for Rome upon some business, by whom perhaps he sent this Epistle.

VERS. 2.-- That ye receive her worthily. Or, as other codices have it, very becomingly and honorably.

VERS. 3.-- Prisca and Aquila. Aquila is the husband of Priscilla: these fellow-helpers of Paul had come to Rome for the confirming of the Romans. So also all the others whom he salutes are understood to have been at Rome.

VERS. 4.-- The churches of the gentiles. Because these labor for the advancement of the gentiles, exhorting to the faith of Christ, who also did not refuse to suffer perils for the Apostle; 518Bwhence the Romans too ought to obey them.

VERS. 10.-- Apelles. Through temptations he was found faithful in Christ: even if not his friend, or a partaker of his work.

VERS. 11.-- Of Aristobulus. This Aristobulus was wont to gather the brethren in Christ, whom the Apostle salutes, thus far approving his deed. Of the household of Narcissus. Narcissus is said to have been a priest, as is read in other codices, who by traveling confirmed the holy brethren; and because he was not then present, he salutes his people; and because he did not know the merits of them all, he distinguishes, subjoining: who are in the Lord, that is, those whom ye shall know to be worthy.

VERS. 12.-- She hath labored. This labor, of which the Apostle speaks more frequently, is in exhortation and in the ministry of the saints, 518Cand in affliction and in want for God's sake.

VERS. 13.-- And mine. For her sanctity he calls her his own mother, whose son he set over an ecclesiastical office.

VERS. 15.-- And all. All, to whom he writes and whom he names, he bids to salute one another in a holy kiss, that is, in the peace of Christ, that the kisses may be religious, not carnal.

VERS. 16.-- Of Christ. That is, those that trust in Christ, not in any other thing.

VERS. 17.-- That ye mark them. He touches the false apostles, whom throughout the whole Epistle he warns are to be avoided.

VERS. 19.-- For your. Therefore I admonish you to avoid them, because your faith and obedience is praised everywhere: 518Dbecause ye are in the head of the world, and so by your example others might already be corrupted. Or, I ask you to avoid them, because ye have readily obeyed, which is good, and thereat I rejoice; but I wish you to be wise in discerning the good, and without any share of evil.

VERS. 20.-- And the God. Be ye wise: but may God crush Satan, that is, false preachers, or any man whatsoever opposing you, or the devil. Under the feet. That ye may despise the head, that is, the first motions of suggestions, and if it is the devil, that ye may crush his head, as was said to Eve in the figure of the Church, or of sensuality. Grace. The grace which he promised at his coming, he now wishes for them.

VERS. 21.-- There salute you. As if he should say: So many and so great men 519Arejoice together at what ye have begun, and therefore it becomes you to persevere.

VERS. 23.-- And the whole. Above he had said all the Churches; but here he says the Church of another province, whence Caius was.

VERS. 25.-- Now to him. Thus do I admonish you. But to him who is able to confirm you be glory, from whom alone, being good, are all good things; wherein the sum of the epistle is noted, because here the Apostle principally purposes to admonish them that they attribute all things to the grace of God.

According to the revelation. By mystery he means the incarnation of Christ, etc., which things were hidden from eternal times: because although in some part they had been known to the ancient fathers, 519Byet by none were they fully 520Aknown, until in their own time they were revealed through Christ himself.

VERS. 26.-- By the Scriptures of the prophets. Unlocked by him, giving testimony to this preaching. Made manifest among all nations unto obedience, that is, that they may obey the faith by working well. Kept silent to others, but known to God alone: because although it be now revealed to men, yet it is known to God alone, because he alone knows why it was so done. Wherein he restrains the inquirers who ask: why has God deferred so long? why has he permitted so many nations to perish.

VERS. 27.-- To whom be honor. (AUG.) That which is added: To whom be glory, etc., as far as because through him God the Trinity became known 520Bto men, which is the mystery.