I. To whom does it refer? I feel persuaded that we shall all admit that, if any person were to read the chapter without having some previous opinion to support, he would believe that the Apostle was speaking of himself. The word ‘I’ occurs no less than twenty-eight times in the passage. Such expressions as ‘I do,’ ‘I consent,’ ‘I allow,’ ‘I delight,’ are found continually; and certainly the natural conclusion would be that when he said, ‘I,’ he meant himself. I know that it is sometimes said that he personated some other person; a legalist, or one in a lower Christian life. But there is not the least evidence of any such personation in the passage, and he says not one word to lead us to suppose that such was his intention. In iii. 5, he does thus personate an objector; and says, ‘But if our unrighteousness commend,’ &c. But then he distinctly states that he is doing so in the words, ‘I speak as a man.’ But there is nothing of the kind here. There is a plain, simple statement in his own name; passing from the ‘I,’ which pervades the chapter, to ‘I, myself,’ in the last verse; and I am utterly at a loss to understand on what principle these plain words, ‘I myself,’ can be supposed to express the personation of some other man. II. In answer then to our first question, I am brought to the conclusion that when he spoke of ‘I myself,’ he meant himself, and not another: and we may pass to our second question. To what period of his spiritual history did he refer: did he speak of the past, or of the present? Was he describing some period of past anxiety out of which he had been delivered, so as to enter on the joys of the eighth chapter? Or was he speaking of his state of mind at the very time, that he was writing the eighth chapter, and declaring, ‘Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father?’ In answer to this I have not the smallest hesitation in saying that, according to every principle of sound exposition, the seventh chapter refers to exactly the same period as the eighth; that it is a description of his own experience at the time he wrote the words; and that we should have just as much authority for saying that the eighth chapter referred only to the future, as that the seventh referred only to the past. For this I give three reasons:—