O wretched man that I am.-This language is suitable only to the regenerate man. An unregenerate man does not feel the wretchedness here expressed. He is indeed a wretched man, but he does not feel that he is so. He may be sensible of misery, and he may be filled with fear and dreadful forebodings; but the person here described is wretched only from a feeling of that evil principle which is in his members. Such a feeling no unregenerate man ever possessed. An unregenerate man may wish to be delivered from danger and punishment, but instead of wishing to be delivered from the law of his nature, he delights in that law. He has so much pleasure in indulging that law, that he risks all consequences in obeying it.

The body of this death.-Some understand this of his natural body, and suppose the exclamation to be a wish to die. But this would be a sentiment totally at variance with the principles of the Apostle, and unsuitable to the scope of the passage. It is evidently an expression of a wish to be free from that corrupt principle which caused him so much affliction. This he calls a body, as before he had called it his members. And he calls it a body of death because its demerit is death. It causes death and everlasting ruin to the world; and had it not been for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, it must

have had the same consequences with respect to all.

V. 25.—I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

I thank God. Some suppose that this expresses thanks for the victory as already obtained. But this cannot be the meaning; as in the same breath, the Apostle speaks of his wretchedness because of the existence of the evil. Some, again, supposing that it refers to present deliverance, explain it to be the freedom from the law spoken of in the preceding part of the chapter. But this would make the Apostle speak entirely away from the purpose. He is speaking of that corruption which he still experiences. Besides, the form of the expression requires that the deliverance should be supposed future, who SHALL deliver me? I thank God through Jesus Christ. The natural supplement is, he will deliver me. At death Paul was to be entirely

freed from the evil of his nature. The consolation of the Christian against the corruption of his nature is, that although he will not get free from it in this world, he will hereafter be entirely delivered.

So then. This is the consequence which Paul draws, and the sum of all that he had said from the 14th verse. In one point of view he served

the law of God, and in another the law of sin. This will ever in this world remain the character of the regenerate man. In every believer, and in no one else, there are these two principles, sin and grace, flesh and spirit, the law of the members, and the law of the mind. This may be perverted by the opposer of divine truth to afford a handle against the gospel, and by the hypocrite to form an excuse for his sin. But it gives ground to neither. It is the truth of God, and the experience of every Christian. If any man will pervert it to a wicked purpose, he will bear his sin. We are not at liberty to pervert the word of God in order to preserve it from a contrary perversion. Many, no doubt, wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction. I myself. As if to render it altogether impossible to imagine that the Apostle was personating another man, he uses the strongest and most pointed language in the present time throughout the whole passage; concluding it with this expression, which cannot, if language has a meaning, be applied to another person. It is a phrase which again and again he employs. Rom. ix. 3; 2 Cor. x. 1, and xii. 13.

On the whole, then, we here learn that the Apostle Paul, notwithstanding all the grace he was favoured with, found a principle of evil operating so strongly in his heart that he denomi

nates it a law always present and active to retard him in his course. He was not, however, under its dominion. He was in Christ Jesus a new creature, born of God, renewed in the spirit of his mind. He delighted in the holy law of God in all its extent and spirituality, while at the same time he felt the influence of the other hateful principle, that tendency to evil which characterises the old man, which waged perpetual war against the work of grace in his soul, impelling him to the commission of sin, and constantly tending to bring him under its power. Nothing can more clearly demonstrate the fallen state of man, and the entire corruption of his nature, than the perpetual and irreconcilable warfare which that corruption maintains in the hearts of all believers against "the divine nature" of which they are made partakers.

When in the hour and power of darkness the Prince of this world came to assault the Redeemer, he found nothing in him—nothing on which his temptations could fix or make an impression; but how different was it when he assailed the Apostle Peter. Him he overcame, and to such an extent as to prevail on him to deny his Lord and Master, notwithstanding all the firmness and sincerity of his previous resolu→ tions. Had not the Lord interposed to prevent his faith from entirely failing, Satan would have

taken full possession of him as he did of Judas. In the same way it was only by grace that the Apostle Paul was what he was, 1 Cor. xv. 10; and by that grace he was enabled to maintain the struggle against his old corrupt nature. "My grace," said Jesus to him," is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness."

The warfare between the flesh and the spirit, described in this chapter, has greatly exercised the ingenuity of men who have not been practically acquainted with its truth. Few are willing to believe that all men are so bad by nature as they are here represented, and fondly imagine that the best of men are much better than this description would prove them to be. Every effort of ingenuity has accordingly been resorted to by many to divert the Apostle's statements from the obvious conclusion to which they lead, and to modify his doctrine, so as to make it worthy of acceptance by human wisdom. But they have laboured in vain. Their theories not only contradict the Apostle's doctrine, but are generally self-contradictory. Every Christian has in his own breast a commentary on the Apostle's language. If there be any thing of which he is fully assured, it is that Paul