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A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans
A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans Author:Charles Hodge General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1872 Original Publisher: A. Martien Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can sele... more »ct from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: INTRODUCTION. PAUL. i When Paul and the other apostles were called to enter upon their important duties, the world was in a deplorable and yet most interesting j state. Both Heathenism and Judaism were in the last stages of decay. 1 The polytheism of the Greeks and Romans had been carried to such an i extent as to shock the common sense of mankind, and to lead the more | intelligent among them opi nly to reject and ridicule it. This skepticism i had already extended itself to the mass of the people, and become almost | universal. As the transition from infidelity to superstition is certain, and i generally immediate, all classes of the people were disposed to confide | in dreams, enchantments, and other miserable substitutes for religion, i The two reigning systems of philosophy, the Stoic and Platonic, were i alike insufficient to satisfy the agitated minds of men. The former 1 sternly repressed the best natural feelings of the soul, inculcating nothing i but a blind resignation to the unalterable course of things, and promising j nothing beyond an unconscious existence hereafter. The latter regarded i all religions as but different forms of expressing the same general truths, i and represented the whole mythological system as an allegory, as incom- i prehensible to the common people as the pages of a book to those who , cannot read. This system promised more than it could accomplish. It i excited feelings which it could not satisfy, and thus contributed to pro- | duce that general ferment which existed at this period. Among the 1 Jews, generally, the state of things w...« less