did not look to it as extending to the thoughts of the heart. Paul, referring to his state before his conversion, says that, touching the righteousness of the law, he was blameless, Phil. iii. 6; and it was only when he understood the law in its full extent that he became selfcondemned.

For I had not known lust.—The original word for lust signifies strong desire, whether good or bad. Here it is used in a bad sense. It is that disposition by which we are inclined to evil,-the habit and inclination to sin, and not merely the acts which proceed from it. It is evident that the Apostle here speaks of this habit, that is to say, of our inclination to sin and habitual corruption; for he distinguishes this inclination. from its acts in verse 8th, saying, sin taking occasion by the commandment wrought in me all manner of concupiscence, or lust.

Except the law had said, thou shalt not covet.-Without the law he would not have known that the desire of what is forbidden is sinful; that the very thought of sin is sin is known only by the word of God. Indeed, many who hear that word will not receive this doctrine. The Roman Catholics hold that such desires are not criminal, if the mind do not acquiesce in them. Thou shalt not covet.-This implies lusting against the will of God, and extends to the first rise and lowest degree of every evil thought. It is not to be confined to what are called inordinate desires, or desires carried to excess, but comprehends every desire contrary to the commandment.

V. 8.-But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead.

The same word rendered lust in the foregoing verse

is here rendered concupiscence, which is not so proper a translation, having a more limited meaning generally attached to it. In both verses the original word indicates our natural inclination to sin, and not voluntary sinful acts—not sins produced, which are the acts proceeding from lust, but our innate and vicious propensity to sin producing those acts. In the preceding verse, Paul had shown that the law does not cause sin, but discovers it, stripping it of its disguise, and bringing it to light. Here he asserts that the commandment discovered to him the sinful nature of evil desires. It laid on him the most solemn obligations to resist them ; and the natural corruption of his heart took occasion from the restraints of the law to struggle against it, and break out with more violence. Sin, he says, wrought in him all manner of lust. It excited and discovered in him those corruptions of which he had been unconscious, until they were encountered and provoked by the restraints of the law. It does not appear that it is by feeling the curse and condemnation of the law, that sin takes occasion by the law to work in us all manner of concupiscence. By feeling the curse and condemnation of the law, the impenitent sinner is excited to hate the law and to hate God. But the thing to which we are here said to be excited is not this, but we are excited to desire things forbidden by the law. It is quite true that the feeling of the condemnation of the law aggravates the evil of our hearts, but it is lust or concupiscence that is here said to be inflamed by the prohibitions of the law. Nothing can more clearly discover the depravity of human nature than the holy law of God, the unerring standard of right and wrong, becoming an occasion of sin; yet so it is. Whatever is pro

hibited is only the more eagerly desired. So far, then, was the law from subduing the love of sin, that its prohibitions increased the desire of what it prohibited. It may restrain from the outward act, but it excites the evil inclinations of the mind.

Without the law sin was dead.-Some understand this as meaning the same with the declaration, that "where there is no law there is no transgression ;" but the connexion requires that we understand it of the sleeping or dormant state of sin. The Apostle would not have been without sin, but he would not have felt the action of his unlawful desires, if the strictness of the commandment had not become the occasion of exciting and making them manifest; for without the law sin, or the workings of his corrupt nature, encountering no opposition, their operation would not have been perceived.

Every Christian knows by experience the truth of all the Apostle declares in this verse. He knows that as soon as his eyes were opened to discover the spirituality of the law, he discerned in himself the fearful working of that corruption in his heart, which, not being perceived before, had given him no uneasiness. He knows that this corruption was even increased in violence by the discovery of the strictness of the law, which makes not the smallest allowance for sin, but condemns it in its root, and in its every motion. "The 'wicked nature," says Luther "cannot bear either the good, or the demands of the law; as a sick man is 'indignant when he is desired to do all that a man in 'health can do." Such is the effect of the law when the eyes of the understanding are first opened by the Spirit of God. A power, formerly latent and inefficacious, then appears on a sudden to have gathered

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strength, and to stand up in order to oppose and defeat the purposes of the man, who hitherto was altogether unconscious of the existence in himself of such evils as those which he now perceives.

V. 9.-For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.

Paul was alive without the law when he thought proudly of his good life, but when the commandment came with the power of the Spirit, then it slew him and destroyed all his legal hopes. I was alive. That is, in my own opinion. Mr Stuart finds fault with this sense as given by Augustine, Calvin, and many others. But his reasons are without weight. After exhibiting the meaning of the whole connexion in this view, he asks," Is this then the way in which the law ' of God proves fatal to the sinner, viz. by convincing ' him of the true and deadly nature of sin ?" Not fatal to the sinner, but fatal to his view of salvation by the law. Nothing can be clearer than this passage, and nothing more consistent than this meaning with the whole context. Without the law once.-Was Paul ever without the law? He was in ignorance of it till his conversion ; and this he here calls being without the law. He was ignorant of its spirituality, and consequently had no true discernment of his innate corruption. Mr Stuart asks, "But when did the commandment come?" and answers, 'We may suppose it to be in childhood, or in riper 'years." It cannot have been in childhood or in riper years, at any time previous to his seeing Christ. For if he had had such a view of the law previously, he would not, in his own opinion, have been blameless concerning its righteousness. It is obvious that Paul had his proper view of the law only in the cross of Christ.

When the commandment came.-That is, when he understood the true import of the commandment as forbidding the desire of any thing prohibited by the law. He had heard and studied it before in its letter; but never till then did it come in its full extent and power to his conscience. All men know that to a certain extent they are sinners, but from this passage and its context in which the Apostle gives an account of his own experience, both in his unconverted and renewed state, we learn that unconverted men do not perceive the sin that is in them in its root, called in the 7th and 8th verses, "lust" or "concupiscence." This is only felt and known when by the Holy Spirit a man is convinced of sin, when as it is here said the commandment comes -when it comes to him with power so that he perceives its real extent and spiritual import. He then discerns sin not only in its various ramifications and actings both internal and external, but also sees that it is inherent in him, and that in his flesh dwells no good thing; that he is not only by nature a sinner and an enemy to God, but that he is without strength, Rom. v. 6, entirely unable to deliver himself from the power of sin, and that this can only be effected by the Spirit of God, by whom he is at the same time convinced of the righteousness of God-that righteousness which has been provided for those who are destitute in themselves of all righteousness.

Sin revived. It was in a manner dead before, dormant, and unobserved. Now that the law was understood, it was raised to new life, and came to be perceived as living and moving. The contrast is with sin as dead, without the understanding of the law. It is true, as Mr Stuart observes, that sin gathers additional