While almost all of the works in this vault use Victorian translations, due to the English translations of this commentary being in copyright, it was machine-translated (by Claude, 2026) from the public-domain Latin. It has not been checked by a human translator.
Commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, long printed among the works of Ambrose. Its author, whom Erasmus first called “Ambrosiaster”, wrote at Rome while Damasus was bishop there (366–384). Chapter 1 of the Epistle; the verse numbers are the Benedictine editors’.
Prologue
If a matter is to be known more fully, its beginnings must first be looked into; for the reason behind a thing can be explained more easily once its origin is learned. And when we have shown the circumstances and the purpose with which the letter was sent, what we say will be seen to be true. It is agreed, then, that in the time of the apostles there were Jews living at Rome, because they lived under Roman rule. Those of them who had believed handed on to the Romans that, while professing Christ, they should keep the Law. The Romans, for their part, having heard the report of Christ’s mighty works, were ready to believe, being men of good sense: and not undeservedly called so, since, though they had been led in wrongly, they were at once corrected and remained in what they had received. These believers in Christ from among the Jews, as we are given to understand, would not accept that He is God from God, thinking this to be against the one God; and for that reason he says that they had not obtained the spiritual grace of God, and so lacked confirmation. These are the same men who had also subverted the Galatians, so that they fell away from the tradition of the apostles; and the Apostle is angry with the Galatians because, having been well taught, they had been easily led astray. With the Romans, however, he had no reason to be angry; he ought rather to praise their faith, because, though they had seen no signs of mighty works and none of the apostles, they had received the faith of Christ — even if after the Jewish rite, in words rather than in understanding, for the mystery of the cross of Christ had not been explained to them. That is why, when certain persons arrived who had believed rightly, questions arose about eating meat or not eating it, and whether the hope that is in Christ was sufficient, or whether the Law must be kept as well. He writes to the Romans, therefore, in four ways, arguing from the reason of nature against the human race from its beginning; for these are the head of all the nations, so that in them all the rest of the Gentiles may learn. The first way is that in which he shows what he is, and what he was, and whose he is; and in this he also strikes at the heresies. The second way is that in which he argues that, by the reason of nature, they did not submit themselves to the one God, and that they did shameful and filthy things with one another and were on that account despised by God; so that believers may rejoice. The third way is that they spurned the Law when it was given; and so he sets the Jews before the Greeks. The fourth way is that in which he teaches that the Jews swerved from the Law and from the promise of God in the matter of Christ, and became like the Gentiles; so that both stand in need of the mercy of God, hoping for salvation not through the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus. This is why he labours with all diligence to take them out from under the Law, since the Law and the prophets were until John (Luke 16:16), and to establish them in faith in Christ alone; and he champions the Gospel as if against the Law — not destroying the Law, but preferring Christianity. For he maintains that Christ was promised in such a way that, once He had been preached, the Law should cease: not the whole of it, for what took place was an abridgement of the Law, so that it might give salvation in brief. Many things had been laid on the men of old because of the hardness of their hearts, to be a burden to them; and these the mercy of God has cut short through Christ, by granting forgiveness of what is past. He is ungrateful to the mercy of God, therefore, who wishes to be under the Law. For Moses had said, Thus shall ye make the children of Israel fearful (Leviticus 15:31), so that whichever way they turned they should meet the Law, and should never be altogether free from anxiety. So, in order to teach that the hope of life and salvation is to be placed in Christ without the Law, and that He Himself is Lord of all, he begins thus: