" God forbid :" and in like manner we reject with indignation the remotest idea that we would make the Gospel an occasion of sin.
But, whilst St. Paul vindicated himself from this charge, he shewed, that, as a woman who had lost her husband was at liberty to be married to another man, so the law to which he once owed allegiance being dead, he was at liberty to be married to Christ, and by him to bring forth fruit unto God.
The terms however in which he expressed himself seemed to criminate the law, as much as he had before seemed to cast reflections on the Gospel. " When we were in the flesh, the motions of sins which were by the law did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death V Here, as he had before denied to the law the office of justifying a sinner, so now, in appearance, he seemed to accuse it as being to him the author both of sin and death. But these representations also he rejects ; and shews, that the law had only been the occasion of sin, and not the cause of itc ; and that it had also been the occasion of death, but was by no means the cause of itd. The proper cause both of sin and of death was the cor- ruption of our nature, which remains with us even to our dying hour; as he himself could testify by bitter experience. This experience of his he then proceeds to describe. But as commentators have differed widely from each other in their explanations of the passage, we will endeavour to shew,
I. Of whom it is to be understood —
That we may bring the matter to a fair issue, we will distinctly inquire,
1. Does the passage relate the experience of an ungodly man, or of one that is truly pious ?
[Those who explain it of an ungodly man say, that the whole preceding chapter represents a true Christian as made free from sine; and that to interpret this passage of a true Christian, would be to make the Apostle contradict himself.
b ver. 5. c ver. 8.
d ver. 13. e Rom.vi. G, 7, 11, 14, 18.