The life and work of St. Paul

EPISTLE TO THE BOMANfc, AtfD THEOLOGY OF ST PAUL. 469
in all his assumed infallibility, and the very air of the " Stand aside, for I am
holier than thou."
"But if" 1
(so we may draw out the splendid rhetoric), " if thou vauntest the
proud name of Jew, 2 8 and makest the Law the pillow of thy confidence, and boastest
thy monopoly in God, and art the only one who canst recognise His will, and diacriminatest
the transcendent 4 in niceties of moral excellence, being trained in the
Law from infancy, if thou art quite convinced that thou art a Leader of the
blind, a Light of those in darkness, one who can train the foolishness, and instruct
the infancy of all the world besides, possessing as thou dost the very form and body
of knowledge and .of truth in the Law thou then that teachest another, dost thou not
teach thyself? thou that preachest against theft, art thou a thief P thou that forbiddest
adultery, art thou an adulterer? 6 leather of idols, dost thou rob temples ? 6
boaster in
"
the Law, by violation of the Law dost thou dishonour God ? For and
here he drops the interrogative to pronounce upon them the categorical condemnation
which was as true then as in the days of the
"
Prophet for on your account the
name of God is being blasphemed among the Gentiles." 7 They had relied on sacri-
fices and offerings, on tithes and phylacteries, on ablutions and mezuzoth, but " omnia
vanitas praetcr amare Deum " et illi soli servire," all things are emptiness save to love
God, and serve Him only," and this weightier matter of the Law they had utterly
neglected in scrupulous attention to its most insignificant minutiae. In fact, the
difference between Heathenism and Judaism before God was the difference between
Vice and Sin. The Jews were guilty of the sin of violating express commands ;
the heathens sank into an actual degradation of nature. The heathens had been
punished for an unnatural transposition of the true order of the universe by being
suffered to pervert all natural relations, and so to sink into moral self-debasement ;
but the Jews had been " admitted into a holier sanctuary," and so were " guilty of
a deeper sacrilege." 8
1 ii , 17, el 8, and not !**, is almost unquestionably the true reading, s, A, B, D, K,
" "
oratio vehemens et splendida (Est.).
*
eflWDfjiaCn.
Verse 17, iiro.vo.rra.vrj-
* Verse lo, JocijAaei TO. 5iaepoira. See Heb. V. 14. The S(.eurro\) a.yicw jtai /3rjAa>i'
(rbUo) was the very function of a Rabbi ; and the Pharisee was a Separatist, because of
his scrupulosity in these distinctions.
6 Verse 21, on the morality of the Pharisees and llabbis, Eee Surenlmsius, Mishna, ii.
200293, and of. Jaa. iv. 413 ; v. 16 ; Matt. xix. 8 ; xxiii. 1325. Josephus calls his
own generation the most xingodlv of all, and says that earthquake and lightning must have
destroyed them if the Romans had not coine. B. J. iv. 8, 3 ; v. 9, 4 j 10, 5 ; 13, 6.
Take the single fact that the " ordeal
"
of jealousy had been, abolished, because of the
prevalence of adultery, by K. Johanan ben Zaccai quoting Hos. iv. 14 (Sotah, f. 47, 1).
6 Verse 22,
6 /S5Au