To Florus 2.151
Writing to the Romans at the time when the Gentiles had begun to be brought in, and churches were therefore being filled with Jews and Gentiles alike, he calms the disturbances of both peoples. He insists that the Gentiles cannot wash away their impiety—their exchanging God’s glory for a likeness of the image of a human being, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles (Romans 1:23)—by pleading ignorance of the law. Through their inborn power of reason they could know God from what he had made: God disclosed through his works, though hidden in the depth of his substance, even if they did not know the observance of Jewish ceremonies (Romans 1:20). Each person’s own feeling suggested the rule of the law insofar as it concerns upright living: namely, to inflict on a neighbor nothing of the kind he would be unwilling to suffer himself (compare Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31; Tobit 4:15). He thus proves that the Gentiles’ impiety can quite rightly be condemned, even if not through the law, then through the justice that established the law. By its judgment, those who sinned without the law will also perish without the law (Romans 2:12). The Jews, however, had even more at stake. They were especially swollen with contempt for the Gentiles, claiming honor for themselves from the law’s purifications. They therefore supposed that Christ’s sin-forgiving grace had not benefited them as it benefited the Gentiles, since they had avoided those sins through the law’s instruction. He shatters this claim with powerful arguments, maintaining that they received all the more through forgiveness precisely because, after the law’s warning, they sinned without any ignorance. By this he proves that they were guilty and could have been severely condemned at justice’s examination, where those who sinned under the law will be judged through the law (Romans 2:12): ‘For it is not hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but doers of the law who will be justified’ (Romans 2:13) (Matthew 7:12; Luke 6:31; Tobit 4:15). Arguing with this purpose throughout the book, he both restrains the Jews’ pride and removes the Gentiles’ excuse for their folly, to teach that Christ’s medicine benefited both peoples equally.
Latin
Scribens itaque ad Romanos eo iam tempore, quo Gentium coeperat esse permixtio atque ideo tam ex Iudaeis quam ex Gentibus complebantur Ecclesiae, tumultus populi utriusque componit inculcans, quoniam nec Gentes impietatem suam, qua mutaverant gloriam Dei in similitudine imaginis hominis et volucrum et quadrupedum et serpentium, legis possint ignoratione diluere, quae per vim rationis ingenitae, etsi non ritum cerimoniarum Iudaicarum, tamen Deum innotescentem operibus, substantiae vero profunditate secretum, potuerint ex his, ab eo quae sunt facta, cognoscere. Legis autem normam, quantum ad vitae probitatem respicit, proprius unicuique suggerebat affectus, videlicet ut nihil tale inferret proximo, quale perpeti noluisset; atque ideo profanitatem Gentium iure optimo argui posse convincit, etsi non per legem, per eam tamen iustitiam, quae condidit legem, et qua iudicante hi, qui sine lege peccaverunt, sine lege et peribunt. Iudaeos vero, quorum magis intererat, quia in despectum Gentium maxime tumescebant, honorem sibi de legis purificationibus vindicantes ac per hoc aestimantes non sibi ita ut Gentibus profuisse Christi gratiam peccata donantem, quandoquidem legis ea institutione vitassent, magna disputationum virtute confringit allegans eis tanto amplius per indulgentiam fuisse collatum, quanto post legis admonitionem sine ulla ignoratione peccassent; per quod approbat eos reos fuisse et vehementer potuisse damnari in iustitiae examine, apud quem qui in lege peccaverunt, per legem iudicabuntur: Non enim auditores legis iusti sunt apud Deum, sed factores legis iustificabuntur [n209] . Hoc ergo proposito per totum librum disputans tum superbiam reprimit Iudaeorum, tum excusationem vanitatis Gentibus demit, ut doceat aequaliter ambobus populis Christi profuisse medicinam.