pressions include every act of worship. The former refers to the recog-- nition of all the divine perfections, the latter to the acknowledgment of God as the source of all good. To regard God as possessed of all ex- cellence, and as the giver of all good, is true piety.
Instead of thus rendering unto God the homage and gratitude which are his due, they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened, ' They became vain,' i. e. foolish, senseless, devoid of true wisdom. " In their imaginations,^'' or opinions. The word here used often occurs in a bad sense, 2 Cor. 10 : 5. Prov. 6 : 18. Jer. 11 : 19. And, in this case, it is the foolish and wicked opinions respecting divine things into which the heathen were sunk, that are intended.
Their foolish heart was darkened. ' Their soul lost all right apprehen- sions of the divine character and perfections, and they were, hence, able to worship, as gods, birds, beasts, and creeping things.' Foolish means both senseless and wicked, see v. 31, and ch. 10: 19. Throughout the Scriptures the ideas of wickedness and folly, of wisdom and piety are intimately related. In scriptural language a fool is a wicked man, the wise are the pious ; foolishness is sin, and wisdom is piety. " Wisdom is the principal thing ; therefore get wisdom, and with all thy getting, get understanding." — Prov. 4:7. 3 : 13, 35, &c. &c. The vanity, there- fore, of which the apostle speaks, as consequent on the loss of the know- ledge of God, is not mere folly ; it expresses the whole moral character of the heathen. Men cannot be such fools without being wicked : comp. ep. 4 : 17. 1 Pet. 1 : 18.
The word heart is used in this passage, and frequently elsewhere, for the whole soul. Men "understand with the heart," Matt. 13: 15; they " believe with the heart," Rom. 10 : 10 ; " the heart is enlightened with knowledge," 2 Cor. 4: 6, &c. The Scriptures do not make the broad distinction between the intellectual and moral faculties, which philosophers have adopted. As they speak of the heart as the source of purely intellectual exercises, so they use the word understanding or mi7id for the seat of the affections.
(22) Professing themselves to be luise, they become fools. The word translated professing, means either simply affirming, saying. Acts 25 : 19, or boasting, pretending to be. The latter is its meaning here. ' While making the highest pretensions to wisdom, they exhibited the greatest folly.' The evidence and illustration of this remark follows in the next verse. That rational creatures, instead of reverencing the God who reveals himself in all his works, should worship creatures inferior to themselves, even brute beasts, and offensive reptiles, is the most hum- bling and melancholy evidence of the imbecility and ruin of our race. It is to be remarked, also, that the higher the advancement of the nations in refinement and philosophy, the greater, as a general rule, the degrada- tion and folly of their systems of religion. Witness the state of opinion and practice on this subject among the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, in comparison with the simpler faith of earlier nations, or of the abori-