Romans 3:9-20 What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin;… Why did you not think of God? One would deem that the thought of Him must, to a serious mind, come second to almost every other thought. The thought of virtue would suggest the thought of both a lawgiver and a rewarder; the thought of crime, of an avenger; the thought of sorrow, of a consoler; the thought of an inscrutable mystery, of an intelligence that understands it; the thought of that ever-moving activity that prevails in the system of the universe, of a supreme agent; the thought of the human family, of a great father; the thought of all-being, of a creator; the thought of life, of a preserver; and the thought of death, of an incontrollable disposer. By what dexterity of irreligious caution did you avoid precisely every track where the idea of Him would have met you, or elude that idea if it came? And what must sound reason pronounce of a mind which, in the train of millions of thoughts, has wandered to all things under the sun, to all the permanent objects or vanishing appearances in the creation, but never fixed its thought on the supreme reality; never approached, like Moses, "to see this great sight." (J. Foster.) Parallel Verses KJV: What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; |