[Sidenote: Ver. 29.] =Is God the Jews' God only? Not of the Nations too? Yes, of the Nations too;= [Sidenote: Ver. 30.] =assuming (εἴπερ) that God is one,= the same Person in both cases; =who will justify Circumcision on the principle of faith, and Uncircumcision by means of faith.= He takes the fact, now ascertained, that faith, still faith, that is to say Christ received, is the condition to justification for all mankind; and he reasons back to the fact (so amply "attested by the Law and the Prophets," from Genesis onwards) that the true God is equally the God of all. Probably the deep inference is suggested that the fence of privilege drawn for ages round Israel was meant ultimately for the whole world's blessing, and not to hold Israel in a selfish isolation. [Sidenote: Ver. 31.] =We cancel Law, then, by this faith of ours (διὰ τῆς πίστεως)?= We open the door, then, to moral licence? We abolish code and precept, then, when we ask not for conduct, but for faith? =Away with the thought; nay, we establish Law;= we go the very way to give a new sacredness to its every command, and to disclose a new power for the fulfilment of them all. But how this is, and is to be, the later argument is to shew. DETACHED NOTE TO ROMANS III. It would be a deeply interesting work to collect and exhibit together examples of the conveyance of great spiritual blessing, in memorable lives, through the perusal of the Epistle to the Romans. Augustine's final crisis (see below, on xiii. 14) would be one such example. As specimens of what must be a multitude we quote two cases, in each of which one verse in this third chapter of the Epistle proved the means of the divine message in a life of historical interest.