[a]What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? God forbid. Nay, I knew not sin, but by the Law: for I had not known [b]lust, except the Law had said, (A)Thou shalt not lust.

But sin took an occasion by the commandment, and wrought in me all manner of concupiscence: for without the Law sin is [c]dead.

[d]For I once was alive, without the [e]law: but when the commandment [f]came, sin revived,

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Footnotes

  1. Romans 7:7 An objection: what then? are the law and sin all one, and do they agree together? nay, saith he: Sin is reproved and condemned by the law. But because sin cannot abide to be reproved, and was not in a manner felt until it was provoked and stirred up by the law, it taketh occasion thereby to be more outrageous, and yet by no fault of the law.
  2. Romans 7:7 By the word, Lust, in this place he meaneth not evil lusts themselves, but the fountain from whence they spring: for the very heathen philosophers themselves condemned wicked lusts, though somewhat darkly, but as for the fountain of them, they could not so much as suspect it, and yet it is the very seat of the natural and unclean spot and filth.
  3. Romans 7:8 Though sin be in us, yet it is not known for sin, neither doth it so rage, as it rageth after that the law is known.
  4. Romans 7:9 He setteth himself before us for an example, in whom all men may behold, first what they are of nature before they earnestly think upon the law of God: to wit, blockish, and ready to sin and wickedness, without all true sense and feeling of sin, then what manner of persons they become, when their conscience is reproved by the testimony of the law, to wit, stubborn, and more inflamed with the desire of sin, than ever they were before.
  5. Romans 7:9 When I knew not the law, then me thought I lived in deed: for my conscience never troubled me, because it knew not my disease.
  6. Romans 7:9 When I began to understand the commandment.

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