Romans 2

Before the first verse

VERSE 1.-- *Wherefore,* etc. This is said in common of the Gentiles and of the Jews. The Jew used to judge the Gentile, on account of his former state; the Gentile the Jew: each of them a man, not a spirit. If the Jew judges the Gentile for idolatry, he too is an idolater. If the Gentile judges the Jew for transgression of the law, he too is a transgressor of the natural law. *Inexcusable.* Because thou thyself art the witness of thy own damnation, while thou judgest another: why so? because thou doest the same things. *Thou who judgest.* Wherein he shows himself to be what he is not, that is, just. *For thou doest the same things.* The Apostle destroys by his own authority the empty excuse of the Gentiles and of the Jews: for the Jew might allege as the excuse of his sin, Though I do the same things, yet my race and the law defend me who am a Jew, and ignorance me who am a Gentile. Against this the Apostle, *Thou who judgest,* etc. It is moreover manifest to those who are wise, that they who bear themselves unjustly are punished by the divine sentence. VERSE 3.-- *But dost thou reckon.* This chapter is commonly read against the Jews and the Gentiles; yet it can also be read specially against any haughty prelate of the Church. *That thou shalt escape.* Thou sinnest the more grievously while thou promisest thyself impunity: because thou despisest the goodness of God, and knowest not that thou despisest it, and dost this? A rebuke, as though he should say: It is a marvel. VERSE 4.-- *Or the riches of his goodness.* Copious is the goodness which gives many things and to many, etc., *as far as* but turns it to impunity. VERSE 5.-- *But according to.* For there are some to whom the evils they do are displeasing, and, led by repentance of heart, they labour, so far as it is given them, to come out of them: of whom he does not here speak. There are others to whom evils are pleasing, and who, presuming too much upon the mercy of God, stubbornly persist in them, wherein they show his patience and heap up their own burden by sinning the worse. And there are others to whom evils are indeed displeasing, but since they understand them to be grievous, they think that they can no longer be pardoned, like him who said: *My iniquity is greater*, etc. Those therefore by excessive hope deem God not just; but these by despair reckon God not good. From both, then, they shall be imperilled, and both by hoping and by despairing, labouring under contrary things and contrary affections, they shall perish. *Of the just judgment.* He said that the judgment of God is just, etc., *as far as* penitence cannot profit the sinner. VERSE 6.-- *Who will render to every man.* Who now does not render to those whom he sets free, since toward the unjust his goodness is now bountiful. But in the time to come he will render evil for evil, since he is just; good for evil, since he is good and just. Only he will not render evil for good, since he is not unjust. It belongs to justice that they should never lack punishment, whose mind, etc., *as far as* that a man be punished eternally. VERSE 8.-- *Indignation.* Lest he should seem to be angry and not to take vengeance: whence tribulation and anguish. VERSE 9.-- *Tribulation and anguish.* Meanwhile in the soul alone before the judgment, but after the judgment wrath and indignation. *Upon every.* What above was indefinite, there: *But to those who,* is here universal, that it may include the Jew and the Gentile. He says *soul,* because in the unbeliever it is the soul that acts, for whose faithlessness it shall be straitened with spiritual punishment. *Of the Jew first.* He always sets the Jew first: because as the believer is the more honourable on account of Abraham, so the unbeliever is to be dealt with the worse, because he refused what was promised to the fathers. VERSE 11.-- *For there is not,* etc. He makes the Jew and the Gentile equal in punishment and in glory: because God judges not according to persons, but according to merits; because he condemns both according to the measure of the sin. God does not follow the prerogative of race, so as to receive the unbelieving for the fathers' sake, or to cast from himself the believing because of the unworthiness of his parents, but he either rewards or condemns each one by his own merit. VERSE 12.-- *Without the law.* The Apostle called the Gentiles without law for this reason, that they had not received the written law of Moses, which the Jews boasted that they had received. *In the law.* From those who have known the divine commandments the excuse is taken away, etc., *as far as* or by the addition of their own will. *They shall be judged.* Not that they should be saved as it were through fire, as some say, but they shall utterly perish. For Christ says that it shall be more tolerable for Sodom in the judgment than for the Jews who do not believe in Christ. And again he says that they shall not have an excuse for the sin of unbelief, because he came and spoke to them: of which those have an excuse to whom he spoke neither through himself nor through his own, who nevertheless shall not escape damnation: because *they who without the law,* etc. Yet they shall suffer lighter things, because from him to whom more is committed, more is required. VERSE 13.-- *For not the hearers.* Does the law alone *sulvat*? No, because it does not make men just, and this is: For not for the hearing, but the doers, whosoever they be, which indeed is through grace. *But the doers,* that is, those who believe in Christ, whom the law promised, whosoever they be, which is not except through grace. * The doers of the law shall be justified,* that is, shall be accounted just, or shall be made just, not those who were doers before shall be justified, since the Gentiles also. VERSE 14.-- *For when,* etc. Above he had said that the Gentile is condemned if he should work evil, and saved if well: but since he has not the law, as though he did not know what is good or what is evil, it seems that neither ought to be imputed to him. Against this the Apostle: although he has not the written law, yet he has the natural, by which he understands and is conscious to himself what is good and what is evil; for vice is against nature, and grace assuredly heals it. For the image in the human soul has not been so far worn away by the stain of earthly affections that no lineaments have remained in it. That which was there impressed through the image of God, when man was created, has not been altogether blotted out. Accordingly, when the vice has been healed by grace, those things which are of the law are done naturally. Not that grace is denied through nature, but rather that nature is repaired through grace: by which grace, in the inner man renewed, the law of justice is written again, which fault had blotted out. VERSE 15.-- *The work of the law.* It is faith, which they have of their own accord in their hearts, that is, in their inmost affection, where faith works through love. VERSE 17.-- *But if thou,* etc. Here he attacks the Jews, accusing them the more grievously of their sins, in that they had more helps. VERSE 19.-- *A guide.* He calls the Gentiles blind and abiding in darkness, who, being deprived also of reason, are blind; and if they know anything, yet they are in darkness. VERSE 20.-- *Having the form.* That thou mayest be to others an example of the knowledge of the law and of the truth. For some have the knowledge and understanding of a book and perceive it as the author himself perceived it, yet they have not the truth from it: because they know not how it is true, nor even that it is true. But the Jew boasts that he has the sense of the law, and knows that that sense of the law is true, so that he is a model to others who wish to know. VERSE 24.-- *For the name of God.* Among the Gentiles the name of God is blasphemed through the Jews: because the Jews strove to persuade believers that Christ ought not to be called God. Or because of old the Gentiles did not notice that the Jews had been delivered over to them for their own offences, but gave the glory of their victory to their idols, as though they had conquered the God of the Jews in the Jews. VERSE 25.-- *Circumcision indeed.* He showed above that the law does not help them, and now that circumcision does not help toward obtaining justice. *It profiteth, if the law,* etc. Because by obeying God he makes a sign of the truth, while an untaught people is kept under the fear of God. *It profiteth.* It is asked: how does he here say that circumcision profits, when in what follows he says: If you be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing? The answer is: he would have this understood according to the state of the different times. For according to the state of the old law circumcision once profited, but it did not profit unto salvation without the spiritual observance of the law, of which he speaks here. But now, that is, in the time of grace, after the truth has been shown forth, not only does it not profit, but it even harms, of which he speaks in what follows. VERSE 26.-- *Is it not.* The Gentile by comparison with himself shows thee, O Jew, worthy of damnation, thou who hast known not by nature, nor by circumcision, but by the law, that which he [knows] by nature, that is, Christ? VERSE 27.-- *He shall judge,* etc. * Circumcision is in the flesh.* To circumcise is from the generative member, etc., *as far as* in whom there is not the circumcision of the flesh, but the observance of the law. VERSE 28.-- *For not.* As if to say: a Gentile can well become a Jew, and a Jew a Gentile, as has been said. *A Jew.* It is interpreted *one confessing:* for he who truly believes and rightly confesses is truly a Jew. VERSE 29.-- *The circumcision of the heart.* It is that which purifies the soul, and cuts away the stains of vices. *Whose praise.* God praises the believer, etc., *as far as* which appeared before men in the work. *Not of men.* But he calls it the circumcision of the heart, namely a will pure from all unlawful concupiscence: which is not brought about by the letter teaching and threatening, but by the Spirit helping and healing.