The life and work of St. Paul

EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOOT OF ST. PAUL. 4(57
What it does is to warn us against seeking and following the lowest and most
short-lived pleasures as a final end. This was the fatal error of the popular
Hedonism. St. Paul's sketch of its moral dissolution and the misery and
shame which it inevitably involved, is but another illustration of the truth that
" Who follows pleasure, pleasure slays,
God's wrath upon- himself he wreaks ;
But all delights attend his days
Who takes with thanks but never seeks."
ii. Having thus accomplished his task of proving the guilt of the Gentiles,
he turns to the Jews. But he does so with consummate tact. He does not
at once startle them into antagonism, by shocking all their prejudices, but
begins with the perfectly general statement, " Therefore * thou art inexcusable,
O man every one who judgest." The " therefore " impetuously anticipates
the reason why he who judges others is, in this instance, inexcusable namely,
because he does the same things himself. He does not at once say, as he
might have done, "You who are Jews are as inexcusable as the Gentiles,
because in judging them you are condemning yourselves, and though you
habitually
'
call them sinners '
you are no less sinners yourselves." 2 This is
the conclusion at which he points, but he wishes the Jew to be led step by
step into self-condemnation, less hollow than vague generalities. 3 He is of
course speaking alike of Jews and of Pagans generically, and not implying
that there were no exceptions. But he has to introduce the argument against
the Jews carefully and gradually, because, blinded by their own privileges, they
were apt to take a very different view of their own character. But they were
less excusable because more enlightened. He therefore begins, " O man," and
not " O Jew," and asks the imaginary person to whom he is appealing whether
he thinks that God will in his case make an individual exception to His own
inflexible decrees? or whether he .intends to despise the riches of God's endur-
ance, by ignoring 4 that its sole intention is to lead him to repentance and so
to heap up against himself a horrible treasury of final ruin ? God's law is
rigid, universal, absolute. It is that God will repay every man according to
his works. 6 This law is illustrated by a twofold amplification, which, beginning
and ending with the reward of goodness, and inserting twice over in the
1 This Aifc of Ii. 1 is clearly proleptic.
8 Gal. ii. 15, i^iets u