The Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans ranks first among all his letters for the depth of thought and wealth of revelation which it contains. It treats of the most exalted questions of human thought, and handles the most difficult problems of Christian faith and hope. Its subject-matter is the eternal election of the Gentile and Jewish world to salvation in Christ; the guidance of the heathen by the law of nature, and of the Jews by the Mosaic law; the powers of man when left to himself, and of man supernaturally raised; the universality and potency of the saving grace of Christ, and the manner of its appropriation in justification by faith; finally the life, death and resurrection in which the Christian, through faith, unites himself with Christ.[452] We may doubt whether the young Doctor of Wittenberg was qualified to grapple with so great a task as the explanation of this charter of faith, especially bearing in mind his comparatively insignificant knowledge of the Fathers of the Church and the theological literature of the past, his impetuosity in dealing with recondite questions, and his excitable fancy which always hurried in advance of his judgment. At any rate, he himself thought his powers sufficient for a work on which the most enlightened minds of the Church had tested their abilities. He immediately followed up this Commentary with other lectures on certain epistles of St. Paul, wherein the Apostle discloses the depths of his knowledge. On perusing the lengthy pages of the Commentary on Romans we are amazed at the eloquence of the young author, at his dexterity in description and his skill in the apt use of biblical quotations; but his manner of working contrasts very unfavourably with that of the older Commentators on the Epistle, such as Thomas of Aquin with his brevity and definiteness and, particularly, his assurance in theological matters. Luther’s mode of treating the subject is, apart from other considerations, usually too rhetorical and not seldom quite tedious in its amplitude. The work, with its freedom both in its language and its treatment of the subject, reveals many interesting traits which go to make up a picture of Luther’s inward self. He starts with the assumption that the whole of the Epistle was intended by its author to “uproot from the heart the feeling of self-righteousness and any satisfaction in the same,” and—to use his own odd expression—“to implant, establish and magnify sin therein (‘_plantare, ac constituere et magnificare peccatum_’).”[453] “Although there may be no sin in the heart or any suspicion of its existence,” he declares, we ought and must feel ourselves to be full of sin, in contradistinction to the grace of Christ from Whom alone we receive what is pleasing to God.