For, though there were parts of God’s being into which the eye could not penetrate, still they were easily to be inferred from the character of His visible creation, which bore throughout the stamp of Omnipotence and Divinity.
The invisible things of him. — His invisible attributes, afterwards explained as “His eternal power and Godhead.”
Are clearly seen... by the things that are made. — There is something of a play upon words here. “The unseen is seen — discerned by the eye of the mind — being inferred or perceived by the help of that which is made,” i.e., as we should say, by the phenomena of external nature.
Even His eternal power and Godhead. — A summary expression for those attributes which, apart from revelation, were embodied in the idea of God. Of these “power” is the most obvious. St. Paul does not go into the questions that have been raised in recent times as to the other qualities which are to be inferred as existing in the Author of nature; but he sums them up under a name that might be used as well by a Pagan philosopher as by a Christian — the attributes included in the one term “Godhead.” Divinity would be, perhaps, a more correct translation of the expression. What is meant is “divine nature,” rather than “divine personality.”
So that they are without excuse. — They could not plead ignorance.