A Treatise on the Spirit and the Letter 43
43 A Question Touching the Passage in the Apostle About the Gentiles Who are Said to Do by Nature the Law’s Commands, Which They are Also Said to Have Written on Their Hearts PL 44, 226
Now we must see in what sense it is that the apostle says, “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves, which show the work of the law written in their hearts,” lest there should seem to be no certain difference in the new testament, in that the Lord promised that He would write His laws in the hearts of His people, inasmuch as the Gentiles have this done for them naturally. This question therefore has to be sifted, arising as it does as one of no inconsiderable importance. For some one may say, “If God distinguishes the new testament from the old by this circumstance, that in the old He wrote His law on tables, but in the new He wrote them on men’s hearts, by what are the faithful of the new testament discriminated from the Gentiles, which have the work of the law written on their hearts, whereby they do by nature the things of the law, as if, forsooth, they were better than the ancient people, which received the law on tables, and before the new people, which has that conferred on it by the new testament which nature has already bestowed on them?”
Quaestio in locum Apostoli de Gentibus quae naturaliter facere legem, eamque habere scriptam in cordibus dicuntur. Videndum est autem quomodo dicat Apostolus, Cum enim Gentes quae legem non habent, naturaliter quae legis sunt faciunt, hi legem non habentes, ipsi sibi sunt lex, qui ostendunt opus legis scriptum in cordibus suis: ne videatur non esse certa distantia Novi Testamenti, quod leges suas Dominus in cordibus populi sui se scripturum esse promisit, quandoquidem hoc Gentes naturaliter habeant. Pertractanda igitur haec quaestio, quae non mediocris exorta est. Dicet enim aliquis, Si Deus hinc discernit a Vetere Testamento Novum, quod in Vetere legem suam scripsit in tabulis, in Novo autem scripsit in cordibus: fideles Novi Testamenti unde discernuntur a Gentibus, quae habent opus legis scriptum in cordibus suis, quo naturaliter quae legis sunt faciunt; quasi jam illo populo vetere potiores, qui legem accepit in tabulis, et novo populo priores, cui hoc praestatur per Testamentum Novum, quod his natura jam praestitit?