This suggestion the Apostle obviates, by shewing the inconsequence of it. His answer is to this effect. You, says he, conclude, that the Heathens are not accountable, because they have no Law. But it no way follows, because they had no Law extraordinarily revealed to them from Heaven, that therefore the Heathens had no Law, or Rule of life, at all. For these, having no such Law, were a Law unto themselves; that is, their natural reason and understanding was their Law.
And, for the real existence of such natural Law, he appeals to the virtuous ACTIONS of some Heathens, who DO by nature the things contained in the Law; who, besides, as it follows in the next verse, shew the work of the Law written in their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts in the mean while accusing or else excusing one another. In which last words are contained two additional arguments in proof of the same point; the first, taken from their own CONSCIOUSNESS of such a Law; and the second, from their reasonings between one another, ACCUSING or else EXCUSING: for this is the strict sense and literal construction of those words in the original, which we improperly translate—their thoughts in the mean while accusing or else excusing one another[13].
So that in the verses of the Text we have a PROPOSITION asserted; and THREE distinct arguments brought in proof of it. The proposition is, that the Heathen are a Law unto themselves, or, as it is otherwise expressed, have a Law written in their hearts. The arguments in proof of it are, 1. The virtuous lives of some heathen, doing by nature the work of the Law: 2. The force of conscience, testifying their knowledge of such Law: and, 3. lastly, their private and judicial reasonings among themselves, referring to the confessed authority of it.
In conformity to this method of the Apostle, my business will be to open and explain the several arguments in the order, in which they lie; and to confirm, by that means, the truth of his general Proposition, That there is a natural Law, or Rule of moral action, written in the hearts of men.
I. The argument from the virtues of the heathen world, in proof of a Law of nature, written in the hearts of men, will seem strange to some, who may object, “That, if the appeal be to action, it may with greater reason be inferred, there was not any such law; since the crimes and vices of the heathen world, as terribly set forth by St. Paul himself in the preceding chapter, were far more notorious, than its Virtues. So that if there be any force in St. Paul’s appeal to the virtuous lives of some heathen, as evincing a Law, written in their hearts, because their practice was governed by it; the like appeal to the vicious lives of many more heathen, should seem with still more force to prove the non-existence of such Law, in as much as it did not govern their practice.” But the answer is obvious. For a law may be in part, or even totally, violated by persons under a full conviction of its existence and obligation: whereas it is hard to imagine, that any number of men, of different times, in distant places, and under different circumstances of age, temper, and education, should exhibit in their lives the same tenour of action, without the guidance of some fixed and common Rule.
This then being observed, let us turn our eyes upon the heathen world; on that part, more especially, which is best known to us from the authentic monuments of Greek and Roman story. For bad as that world was, it cannot be denied to have furnished many instances of extraordinary virtue. We find there justice, temperance, fortitude, and all those virtues, which their own Moralists called Offices, and which the sacred page has dignified with the name of Graces, exhibited in their fairest forms, and emulating, as it were, even Christian perfection[14].
But it will be said of both these people, what was long since objected by one of them to the other, that their actions were not so illustrious, as is pretended; that we take the accounts of them from their own interested relaters, to whose vanity or genius we are rather to impute the fine portraits, they have given us, of pagan virtue, than to real fact and the undisguised truth of things[15].
Be this allowed. Still there will be ground enough to enforce the Apostle’s conclusion. For whence, if not from the source to which he points, could be derived those numerous corresponding instances, though of faint, unfinished Virtue? how, but by nature, did the heathen, in any degree, the things of the Law? and whence, the traces of that conduct in the pagan world, which the Law itself prescribed as virtuous?
Or, were the evidence from facts ever so suspicious, whence those admired portraits and pictures themselves? or, by what accountable means has it come to pass, that their historians and panegyrists have been able to feign so successfully? In truth, had the pagan world afforded no one instance of a virtuous people, I had almost said, no one instance of a virtuous character, yet would the projected form of such a people, by one hand[16], and the delineation of such a character, by another[17], have been a certain evidence of some Rule of life and manners, written in the heart, if not transcribed into practice; influencing the judgement to approve, if not the will to obey it. But this consideration, perhaps, comes more naturally under the second head of the Apostle’s reasoning, which is drawn,
II. From the force of conscience in the heathen world.