Verse 14 Death reigned, &c.; thus showing that, as Paul had maintained in the Romans 5:18-23, God regarded these generations of men as amenable to a law written upon their hearts.--That had not sinned after the similitude, &c.; that is, being without a revelation, they did not, like Adam, and like the Jews who lived after Moses, break laws distinctly promulgated from God. They sinned only against the light of nature. Still they sinned, and were subjected to death, the penalty of sin; and their case is accordingly included in this survey of the consequences which ensued from the transgression of Adam.--The figure of him that was to come; Jesus Christ. Figure means, in this case, type. The representing Christ as the antitype of Adam, seems to furnish the key to the meaning of this passage, (Romans 5:12-21,) which has always been considered one of great difficulty. The general design of the parallel drawn between Jesus and Adam, appears to be, to show that the redemption by Christ was not a mere Jewish redemption,--the counterpart and consummation of the Mosaic law,--as the Jewish Christians were prone to consider it, but that it had far wider connections and bearings. It was the counterpart and remedy for evils introduced by Adam, and affecting the whole human race; and as the consequences of his transgression brought spiritual ruin and death upon all nations, even though they had not, like Adam, sinned against a revealed law,--the remedy, now at length provided, must not be I limited to the Jews, but must be regarded as coëxtensive, in its applicability, with the ruin which it was intended to repair. If, through the greatness of the divine displeasure against sin, the transgression of Adam, the head, and in some sense the representative, of the human family, was allowed, in its results, to involve all his descendants in ruin,--much more would God, who is more ready to pardon than to punish, give to the offers of salvation by Christ a similar extension. This general idea is expressed in various forms in the Romans 5:15-21, but with a certain degree of reserve and indirectness in all, prompted, apparently, by a desire which the apostle had manifested already in other cases, not to come too abruptly into collision with the prejudices of the Jews. Some of the verses (Romans 5:15,16) exhibit contrasts; others, (Romans 5:17-19,) analogies; but both contrasts and analogies answer the purpose intended, namely, to show that salvation by Christ was correlative to the ruin of the fall, and so, coëxtensive with it in respect to its influences, being intended to afford the offer of salvation to the whole human family.