προπάτορα ἡμῶν κατὰ σάρκα. Here also the explanation is the same, Paul says ‘‘our” forefather because he has no choice. He could speak of his fellow-countrymen as “my kinsmen according to the flesh” ; but it would have been obviously absurd for him to speak of Abraham as “my” forefather. It is only through his relation to the nation that he can claim a connection with Abraham, and hence the “our” in iv. 1 is national, not individual, and has nothing to do with the Romans. Cf. the precisely similar case in ix. 10 (Isaac our father). The same use of the first person plural is found in 1 Cor. x. 1 (All our fathers were under the cloud), which no one doubts was written to a thoroughly Gentile Church. As far therefore as passages like these are concerned, they do not invalidate in the least the evidence adduced for the Gentile character of the Church at Rome.
(6) Not so simple are those passages which speak either in the first or second person plural of the relation of the readers, or of Paul and his readers alike, to the law. The most important of these is chap. vii. 1-6. Paul here speaks to his readers as persons γινώσκουσι νόµον, knowing what law is. Even if we admit—which is not necessary, nor I believe right—that the reference is to the Mosaic law, it does not follow that the readers were Jews. Indeed the explicit recalling of the law to mind, while he assumes it to be known, might plausibly be alleged as an argument against, a Jewish origin. But to pass that by, does not vii. 4, it is argued—So then, my brethren, ye also were made dead to the law by the body of Christ—imply that the persons addressed had lived under the law as well as the writer ?—in other words, that they were Jews? And is this not confirmed, when we read in ver. 5 f., “ When we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were through the law, wrought in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we have been discharged from the law”? Have we not here, in relation to the law, an experience common to Paul and those whom he addressed, and does not this imply that antecedent to their conversion they and he had lived under the law—that is, were Jews by birth? It is natural, at first sight, to think so, but it is certainly wrong. There is an experience common to Paul and to all Christians, what- ever their birth; if it were not so, they would not be Christians. It is possible also for him to describe that experience in relation to the law ; once all Christians were under it, now they are so no more. All Christians were under it, for all were under sin, and to the Apostle sin and law are correlative terms. The law, indeed, did not take precisely the same form for Jew and Gentile ; the one had an objective revelation, the other had a substitute. if not an equiva-