1. We should feel the peculiar responsibilities which rest upon us as the inhabitants of a Christian country, as the members of the Christian church, and possessors of the word of God ; as such, we enjoy advan- tages for which we shall have to render a strict account, vs. 1, 2.
2. It is a mark of genuine piety, to be disposed always to justify God and to condemn ourselves. On the other hand, a disposition to self-justi- fication and the extenuation of our sins, however secret, is an indication of a want of a proper sense of our own unworthiness and of the divine excellence, vs. 4, 5.
3. Beware of any refuge from the fear of future punishment, founded upon the hope that God will clear the guilty, or that he will not judge the world and take vengeance for our sins, vs. 6, 7.
4. There is no better evidence against the truth of any doctrine, than that its tendency is immoral. And there is no greater proof that a man is wicked, that his condemnation is just, than that he does evil that good may come. There is commonly, in such cases, not only the evil of the act committed, but that of hypocrisy and duplicity also, v. 8.
5. Speculative and moral truths, which are believed on their own evi- dence as soon as they are presented to the mind, should be regarded as authoritative and as fixed points in all reasonings. When men deny such first principles, or attempt to push beyond them to a deeper founda- tion of truth, there is no end to the obscurity, uncertainty, and absurdity of their speculations. What God forces us from the very constitution of our nature to believe, asj for example, the existence of the external world, our own personal identity, the difference between good and evil, &c., it is at once a violation of his will and of the dictates of reason to deny or to question. Paul assumed, as an ultimate fact, that it is wrong to do evil that good may come, v. 8.