unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God," i. e. if our ungodliness be the means of displaying the efficacy and excellency of the Gospel, what shall we say ? Is God (i. e. is not God) unrighteous, who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man.) God forbid (replies the Apostle) : for then, how shall God judge the world? Then the objector, still pressing his argument, adds, " For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory (i. e. if God has overruled my errors for the illustration and confirmation of his own truth), why am I yet judged as a sinner?" that is, if I am the means of honouring him, whether intentionally or not, it would be very unjust in God to deal with me as if I dishonoured him. To all which the Apostle answers, f You may as well speak out at once, and say, " Let us do evil, that good may come :" and the only reply that I shall condescend to make to all such impious objectors is, "Their damnation is juste." Thus, as the justice of God is arraigned in reference to what he has threatened ; so also is his truth, in reference to his execution of his threatenings : " There shall come, in the last days, scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation f;" construing thus the forbearance of God into an utter dereliction of his declared purpose. The sovereignty of God is that against which they set themselves with peculiar vehemence. That God should exercise mercy according to his own sovereign will and pleasure, and not according to any desert of man, is an idea which they cannot endure. They consider that as a warrant to cast all the blame of their con- demnation upon God himself; and will confidently say, " Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?" But St. Paul's answer to that objection must silence every human being : " Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonours?" In a word, the whole that God has revealed to us respecting our fall in Adam, our condem- nation by the law, our justification by faith alone, and the eternity of future punishment awarded to all who believe not in Jesus Christ ; the whole of this, I say, is no better than "foolishness" in the eyes of unconverted men'1. And the ground of their accounting it foolishness is, that it is a different mode of proceeding from that which they themselves would follow towards one another : for, as they would not punish to
e Rom. iii. 5—8. f 2 Pet. iii. 4, 9.
b Rom. ix. 18—21. h 1 Cor. i. 23.