All joy to the believer! He can speak,~~ Nor hoped, but in thy righteousness divine : EPIGRAM, on the MINISTRY. UNHAPPY, let your choice have been, With publick hate accurft: When out of place, the best of men, So, if from Heaven an Angel came, Our laws and rights to fave: Give him a ministerial name, And he'll be deem'd a knave. EPIGRAM, on PLAYERS and BALLAD-SINGERS. [By FRAN. QUARLES.] "HEY'RE like the Priest and Clerk at Belial's altar; THE One makes the Sermon: t'other tunes the Pfalter. THE Arminian Magazine, For MARCH 1790. *0*0*0*0*0*0*0* An Illuflration of Part of the Seventh Chapter of the Epiftle to the Romans, from verfe 14, to the end of the Chapter. By JAMES SMITH, Minifter in DUMFERMLINE [Continued from page 63.] An Enquiry into the general fcope of the Paffage. EFORE St. Paul embraced the chriftian religion, he V. BEFOR was certainly in an unregenerate state: therefore his real character before his converfion, was a very proper representation of the fate of every unbelieving finner, who, fets himself in oppofition to the gospel of Jefus Chrift. It was particularly calculated to affect and convince the Jews, bis brethren, who knew the law, and to whom he addreffed this argument, as in verse ist: "Know ye not, brethren, for I speak to you who know the law." Thefe Jews acknowledged that St. Paul's purity and rectitude, before his converfion, ranked him among the most unblamable of his brethren; and VOL. XIII. P that that his corruption and depravity was not more than that with which they were chargeable. His confeffion was a confeffion which fuited them all: the moment they looked into their own heart and life, they faw what St. Paul once felt, and could adopt his language; hence he expreffeth it in the first perfon fingular, and taught their tongue how to utter the teftimony of their confcience and experience. To conclude this particular, St. Paul here fpeaks from experience. He concludes, I myself thus afted: but he was in his ftate of grace when he relates it. This enabled him to look back upon his unregenerate flate in a very different light from that in which he beheld it before: hence his exclamation, ver. 24. and anfwer, ver. 25. "I thank God, through Jefus Chrift." VI. The apoftle's great defign in this epiftle is to prove, that all mankind are flaves to fin and condemnation, from which the law cannot deliver them; but that from this condemnation all thofe are freed who believe in Chrift. "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men," said he, chap. i. 18. and fo went on, "to prove both Jews and Gentiles that they were all under fin," ch. iii. 9. To convince the Jews, "that by the deeds of the law there fhall no flesh be justified," ch. iii. 20. was no easy talk. This, however, he labours to establifh, both from undeniable fact, and from the express teflimony of God himfelf; and then fhews, "that what the law could not do through the flesh, God fending his own Son, in the likeness of finful flesh, accomplished," ch. viii. 3. "There is therefore, (faid he) now no condemnation to them who are in Chrift Jefus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit," ch. viii. 1. In proving thefe great doctrines, he describes what they were under the law, and what they became by the grace of God under the gospel. The apoftle fhews the Jews their condition while they were under the law, to convince them that in this flate they neither can do good, nor please God: "For, (faid he, ch. vii. 5.) when we were |