tage of all to consist, not in merely
doing these wicked things, but in abandoning all distaste for
them--consenting unrestrainedly to those who do them; and this
profoundly true remark explains the moral impotence of much that is
from other points of view excellent in Greek literature.

4. For the punishment of all this sin St. Paul is not content to look
to the 'day of judgement,' though that is to be the final and
characteristic expression of divine wrath, and that 'day of wrath' he
still probably anticipated in the more {72} immediate future; but he
sees already in the actual world of human society as he knows it the
manifold evidence of the divine wrath here and now. Men are receiving
in themselves the fitting reward of their perversity. Their life has
found its own punishment. The divine wrath is actually disclosed in
the facts of experience. 'Look,' St. Paul seems to say, 'at the way
men are living, and ask yourselves if there is any interpretation but
one of the facts you see. There is but one conclusion possible. God
has condemned and is showing His wrath on the human nature which He
made.' Just in the same way in an earlier epistle St. Paul speaks of
the Jews, even before the destruction of Jerusalem, as already judged,
already the subject of the divine wrath[6]. And God's method of
judgement is this. The punishment lies in the natural consequences of
the lawless actions. The wages of sin is also its fruit[7]. And
further, this punishment of sin involves the increased liability to sin
again. One sin 'gives us over' to another, as one good action
facilitates another. This idea was familiar to Jewish teachers. Among
the 'sayings of the Fathers' we find, 'Every fulfilment of duty is
rewarded by another, {73} and every transgression is punished by
another[8].' St. Paul, in fact, in this chapter, may be said to be
concentrating for the Christian Church all that is best and deepest in
the moral philosophy of Judaism.

Now we are in a position to read the first section of St. Paul's
argument without perhaps finding any single idea to the interpretation
of which we have not a clue.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness
and unrighteousness of men, who hold down the truth in unrighteousness;
because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God
manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him since the
creation of the world are clearly seen, bei