[36] _Depravatus_: twisted, wrenched from the straight line. [37] Δικαιούμενοι: the present participle indicates rather the _permanent principle_ of justification than its actual procedure, which is, in each case, a divine sentence of acceptance, an act, an event, single and apart. See on ch. v. 1. [38] Ὃν προέθετο ὁ Θεός: it is possible to render, "_Whom God designed_," in His eternal counsel of redemption. But the context just below emphasizes the thought of "_declaration_," manifestation, explanation of the hidden Treasure. This seems to decide for the other rendering. [39] Ἱλαστήριον: elsewhere in Scripture Greek this word means the Mercy Seat, the golden lid of the Ark, above which the Shechinah shone and on which the blood of atonement was sprinkled. Here is indeed a manifest and noble type of Christ. But on the other hand the word ἱλαστήριον gets that meaning only indirectly. Its native meaning is rather "_a price of expiation_." And a somewhat sudden insertion here of the imagery of the Mercy Seat seems unlikely, in the absence of all other allusion to the High Priestly function of our Lord. [40] We may punctuate, "_through faith, in His blood_"; as if to say "He is Propitiation in (in virtue of) His blood; we get the benefit through faith." But this rendering seems to us the less likely, as the less simple. The construction, "_faith in_" πίστις ἐν τινί, is fully verified by Mark i. 15; "believe _in_ the Gospel." [41] Ἀνοχή: we think that the word here is a pregnant expression for "_the time when God forebore_." [42] Reading γὰρ not οὖν. [43] Δικαιοῦσθαι: the present infinitive, as in ver. 25, puts before us the permanence of the principle on which is based the definite act. [44] _The Life of Father Paul the Venetian, translated out of Italian_: London, 1676. [45] _Memoir of the Early Life of William Cowper, written by Himself_. CHAPTER X _ABRAHAM AND DAVID_ ROMANS iv. 1-12 The Jewish disputant is present still to the Apostle's thought. It could not be otherwise in this argument. No question was more pressing on the Jewish mind than that of Acceptance; thus far, truly, the teaching and discipline of the Old Testament had not been in vain. And St Paul had not only, in his Christian Apostleship, debated that problem countless times with Rabbinic combatants; he had been himself a Rabbi, and knew by experience alike the misgivings of the Rabbinist's conscience, and the subterfuges of his reasoning.