The life and work of St. Paul

488 THE LIFE AKD WORK OF ST. PAtit.
offence. To show his meaning he enters on a psychological study, of which
the extreme value has always been recognised entirely apart from its place
in the scheme of theology. Here he writes as it were with his very heart's
blood; ho dips his pen in his inmost experience. He is not here dealing
with the ideal or the abstract, but with the sternest facts of actual daily
life. There have been endless discussions as to whether he is speaking of
himself or of others ; whether he has in view the regenerate or the unre-
generate [man. Let even good men look into their own hearts and answer.
Ideally, the Christian is absolutely one with Christ, and dead to siu; in
reality, as again and again St. Paul implies even of himself, his life is a
warfare in which there is no discharge. There is an Adam and a Christ
in each of us. "The angel has us by the hand, and the serpent by the
heart." The old Adam is too strong for young Melancthon. 1
Here, then,
he explains, from a knowledge of his own heart, confirmed by the knowledge
of every heart, that the Law, though not the cause of sin, is yet the occa-
sion of it ; and that there are in every human being two laws that is, two
opposing tendencies which sway him from time to time, and in greater or
less degree in opposite directions. And in this way he wrote an epitome
of the soul's progress. When we have once realised that the " I " of the
passage is used in different senses sometimes of the flesh, the lower nature,
in the contemplation of which St. Paul could speak of himself as the chief
of sinners; sometimes of the higher nature, which can rise to those full
heights of spiritual life which he has been recently contemplating; sometimes
generically of himself as a member of the human race it is then
easy to follow his history of the soul.
The Law is not sin Heaven forbid! but it provokes disobedience, 9 and it
creates the consciousness of sin. Without it there is sin indeed, but it is dead ; in
other words, it is latent and unrecognised. That is the age of fancied innocence,
of animal irreflective life, of a nakedness which is not ashamed. But it is a condition
of "immoral tranquillity" which cannot be permanent ; of misplaced confidence
which causes many an aberration from duty. When the blind tendency of wrong
becomes conscious of itself by collision with a direct command, then sin acquires
fresh life at the expense of that misery and shame which is spiritual death. 8 Thus
sin, like Satan, disguises itself under the form of an angel of light, and seizes the
opportunity furnished by the command which in itself is holy, just, and good, 4 to
utterly deceive and to slay me.*
1 " Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By struggles of two opposite desires :
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires."
2 Of this thought there are many interesting classical parallels. Liv. xxxiv. 4 :
" Parricidae cum lege coeperunt, et illis facinus poenamonstravit." Sen, De Clem. i. 23 :
"Gens humanaruit per vetitum et nefas." ILor.Carm. 13, 26 : "Quod licet ingratum est,
quod non licet acrius urit." Ov. Amor. ii. 19, &c. : " The Law produces reflection on the
forbidden object, curiosity, doubt, distrust, imagination, lust, susceptibility of the seed
of temptation and of seduction, and finally rebellion the n-opaSao-w (Lange).
8 "
More peccati vita est hominia; vita peccati mors hominis " (Calvin). "By the
jetser ha-rd " (the evil impulse), says Rabbi Simeon Ben
"
Lakish, is meant the angel of
death " (Tholuck).
4
Holy in its origin, just in its requirements, good in its *
purpose.
vii. 7-12.