tion grant you to be likeminded one toward | from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyanother according to Christ Jesus: ricum, I have fully preached the Gospel of Christ.

6 That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

20 Yea, so have I strived to preach the Gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation:

21 But as it is written, "To whom he was not spoken of, they shall see: and they that have not heard shall understand.

22 For which cause also I have been much hindered from coming to you.

23 But now having no more place in these parts, and having a great desire these many years to come unto you;

24 Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you: for I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you, if first I be somewhat filled "with your company.

25 But now I go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints.

26 For it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem.

7 Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God.

8 Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers:

9 And that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy; as it is written, 'For this cause I will confess to thee among the Gentiles, and sing unto thy name.

10 And again he saith, 'Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people.

11 And again, Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles; and laud him, all ye people.

12 And again, Esaias saith, There shall be a root of Jesse, and he that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles; in him shall the Gentiles trust.

13 Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.

14 And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another.

15 Nevertheless, brethren, I have written the more boldly unto you in some sort, as putting you in mind, because of the grace that is given to me of God.

16 That I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the Gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost.

17 I have therefore whereof I may glory through Jesus Christ in those things which pertain to God.

18 For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ hath not wrought by me, to make the Gentiles obedient, by word and deed,

19 Through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God; so that

3 Or, after the example of. 4 Psal. 18. 49. 10 Or, many ways, or, oftentimes.

27 It hath pleased them verily; and their debtors they are. For if the Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister unto them in carnal things.

28 When therefore I have performed this and have sealed to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain.

29 And I am sure that, when I come unto you, I shall come in the fulness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ.

30 Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me;

31 That I may be delivered from them that do not believe in Judæa; and that my service which I have for Jerusalem may accepted of the saints;

i

be

32 That I may come unto you with joy by the will of God, and may with you be refreshed.

33 Now the God of peace be with you all. Amen.

Verse 16. "That the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified," &c.-Whitby thinks there is here a plain allusion to the Jewish sacrifices, offered by the priest, and which were sanctified or made acceptable and savoury by the libation offered with them.

19. "Illyricum.”—Paul's visit to Illyricum must have been when he traversed Macedonia, as this province adjoined that country on the north-west. Luke does not, however, notice in the Acts that he proceeded so far as Illyricum, any more than he notices his proposed journey into Spain, or his actual journey into Arabia (2 Cor. xi). The precise limits of Illyricum cannot be defined with much precision, as some ancient writers assign it larger limits than others, probably because the people by whom it was inhabited had extended themselves beyond its proper limits. Taken in

an extensive sense, Illyricum may be said to have comprehended nearly all the eastern coast of the Adriatic Gulf, from Istria to the Strait of Otranto, and to have extended north-eastward and eastward to the borders of Pannonia, Upper Moesia, and Macedonia. As thus described, it includes the coast countries of Liburnia and Dalmatia, which some exclude from it. Dalmatia is mentioned in 2 Tim. iv. 10; and is to be regarded as the name of the southern part of Illyricum. The whole was, of course, at this time a Roman province. In the second century we read of a church in Illyricum, whose bishop Eleutherius is mentioned as a noted teacher, a native of Rome, whose mother Anthia had been converted by St. Paul. We also find that there were Christian churches in Illyricum, with bishops over them, from thence onward to the eighth century. See Magdeburg's Eccl. Hist.' in the several centuries.

24. "My journey into Spain."-See the introductory note. The apostle's plan of taking a journey into Spain by way of Rome was frustrated by the circumstances which occurred to him in Judea, and by his appeal to Cæsar, which occasioned his being sent to Rome as a prisoner. Whether he subsequently resumed and accomplished his intention of visiting Spain, is very uncertain. Some think that he never performed this journey; but others affirm that he did, between his two appearances before Nero. One thing is observable, that just before (verse 20) Paul announces his intention, he says that it was his object to preach the Gospel where Christ had not been named, lest he should build upon another man's foundation; which obviously enough suggests that the Gospel had not hitherto been preached in Spain; and, so far, discountenances the legend according to which St. James had already been fifteen years in that country, and had established several churches there.

25 Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my Gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the reve

"Or, tread,

1 Acts 18.2, 26. Or, friends. 3 Or, friends. 41 Cor. 16. 20. 2 Cor. 13.12, 1 Pet, 5. 14 • Or, harmless. 7 Acts 16. 1.

lation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began,

26 But now is made manifest, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith:

27 To God only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ for ever. Amen.

Written to the Romans from Corinthus. and sent by Phebe servant of the church at Cenchrea.

8 Ephes. 3. 9. Col. 1. 26.

Verse 1. "Phebe."-Phoebe was a name of the moon (Diana), as Phoebus was of the sun. It was therefore a most decidedly heathen name, being that of an idol. It appears therefore that the Christian converts did not think it neces sary, on principle, to change the names they had previously borne, when taken from the heathen deities. We do not feel quite assured that, as some think, the name proves Phebe to have been a Gentile previously to her conversion; as it does not appear that the Jews residing in foreign parts had any objection to such names. One eminent disciple. who was certainly a Jew, bore a name, Apollos, taken from a very ancient idol, Apollo, or the sun.

"A servant of the church."-Properly, a deaconess. The office of the deaconess, in the primitive church, was, for the women, analogous to that of the deacon for the men. She attended the baptism of female converts, if she did not, as some think, baptize them; she visited the sick and poor females, and distributed to them the contributions of the church, and also, as occasion required, administered exhortation, comfort, and instruction. Such an office, held by females, was indispensably necessary in the churches of Asia and Greece, since the women lived in considerable sec.csion, and for men to have visited and conversed with them at their own houses would have been accounted indecent, and might have brought a scandal upon the Christian profession. Phebe, it will be observed, was deaconess of a church in Greece, where this class of notions prevailed. Whether there were any in the church at Rome, we do not know. But if so, it was not necessary that the women should be left so much to their care as in Greece; as the intercourse between men and women was there under much less restriction. Cornelius Nepos speaks clearly on this point: "A great many things in our (the Roman) customs are decent, which are accounted scandalous among them the Greeks). For which of the Romans thinks it a shame to take his wife to a feast? or whose wife keeps not the best room of the house, and converses with company? But it is quite otherwise in Greece, where the wife is never admitted to a feast, unless of relations; and always keeps in a retired part of the house, which is called 'the woman's apartment,' whither no one comes to see her who is not her near relation."

3. "Priscilla and Aquila."—It will be remembered that Paul became acquainted with this excellent couple at Corinth (Acts xviii. 2), to which city they had come after having been banished Italy. It now appears that they had returned to Rome. We do not know that the edict of Claudius for the banishment of the Jews was formally repealed; but en his death, and when the government of Nero appeared at first so mild and humane, we may easily conceive that the Jews ventured gradually to return home; and the first who returned being unmolested, others would follow with less hesitation. Be this as it may, it appears that the Christian church, which during their absence must have consisted exclusively of the Gentiles who had been converted, was now restored to its former mixed condition by the return of the banished converts of Jewish origin. It seems probable that most of the persons named in this chapter were among those who, like Aquila and Priscilla, became acquainted with St. Paul during their exile, and were now returned to Rome. It is evident he names some of them as being personally acquainted with them. The other persons, apparently Gentile converts, to whom his affectionate salutations are sent, are probably those of whose good report in the church he had been informed by the exiles.

11. "Them that be of the houshold of Narcissus.”—“The Christian religion had been received into some of the prin cipal houses in Rome, for instance in those of Aristobulus and Narcissus. It is true that the masters of the families are not saluted, but only those of the household: but under these we must not reckon merely abject slaves, according to the modern acceptation of the term, for in the great houses of Rome they who bore this name were frequently men of great importance. Of Aristobulus we have no knowledge; but Narcissus, whose household St. Paul salutes. is perhaps the same person as the freedman of Claudius of this name, who stood in high estimation with the emperor, and was appointed his cabinet secretary. The moral character of this man was not the best, and therefore it was no loss to Christianity that he was not among the members of the Christian community at Rome." (Michaelis's · Introduction,' vi. 92.) This conjecture as to the Narcissus here named is a very common one, and its probability is strengthened by the fact, that Narcissus was not a usual name at Rome, being, in fact, not a Roman one; neither was Narcissus a Roman, as of course appears from his having been a slave of Claudius.

16. With an holy kiss.”—We have had more than one occasion to mention how common the kiss is in the East as an act of civil salutation. So it was anciently, among both the Jews and Gentiles. It was continued by the early Christians in their assemblies, as a token of their perfect love to one another, and it took place after the prayer, and before the celebration of the Lord's supper. Doddridge says, “Chastely and prudently as it was managed, it seems to have been the occasion of those false and scandalous reports which were so industriously propagated among the heathen of the adulterous and incestuous practices in the Christian assemblies; on which account it seems to have been laid aside very early." We rather doubt that these reports had any such origin as this: for we agree with Whitby in concluding that, according to the practice of the Jewish synagogues, and the still existing practice of the Eastern churches, the men and women had separate places in the early Christian assemblies; and that the kiss of peace" was given by the men to the men, and by the women to the women, apart from each other. To this effect Whitby cites a direction from the so called, Apostolical Institutions, "These things being done, let the men apart, and the women apart, salute one another with a kiss in the Lord." Indeed, Origen seems to say that the practice was peculiar to the men.

22. "I Tertius, who wrote this epistle."-It appears to have been the usual practice of Paul to dietate his epistles to an amanuensis, adding a few concluding lines with his own hand, which served to authenticate the letter to those for whom it was destined. There is nothing singular in this practice which was at the time-and at all times-common among men of learning or business. It is commonly thought that the "Tertius" who wrote this epistle, was Silas, who was certainly Paul's companion at this time, and whose Hebrew name is of the same signification as the Latin one of Tertius. It is very possible that Silas, in writing to the Roman Christians, should exhibit his name in a Latin form; but it is impossible to arrive at any certainty in the matter.

23.

66

The chamberlain of the city," oixovoμos Tns Toλsos, answering to the Quaestor Urbanus, among the Romans, the city-treasurer or steward, whose office it was to receive and disburse the public monies. This was a civic office of great trust and honour.

THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PAUL THE APOSTLE

CORINTHIANS.

TO THE

I. CORINTHIANS.-The church at Corinth was founded by St. Paul himself, under the circumstances related by St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles xviii. 1-19. It is there seen that he visited the city on his first journey in Europe, and remained in it a year and a half, Silas and Timothy being his assistants. As was his custom, he preached the Gospel first of all to the Jews; but found them as untractable here as at Thessalonica: some of their principal persons did however join him, among whom were Crispus and Sosthenes, chief rulers of the synagogue. Seeing how obdurate the Jews were, and hearing the blasphemies which they uttered, the Apostle "shook his raiment, and said unto them, Your blood be on your own heads; I am clean: from henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles." Among the Gentiles (including of course those heathen who had been previously converted to Judaism) he met with better success: and those who were added to the church from among them, appear to have continued his faithful adherents in the midst of the divisions which afterwards arose; although when stimulated by the opposition of Judaizing Christians, they were led to push his doctrine of Christian liberty to an unwarrantable extreme, which occasioned him great regret, and drew from him the advice and reproofs which this Epistle contains. But this occurred after St. Paul had left Corinth. After having remained eighteen months in that city, he took a journey into Asia, visited Ephesus, Jerusalem, and Astioch; and then passing through Galatia and Phrygia, returned to Ephesus. He remained there three years, and it was towards the close of this period that the present Epistle was written. This appears from ch. xvi. 8, where he expresses his intention of remaining in that city till Pentecost; after which he proposed to re-visit Greece, and hoped to spend the winter at Corinth. This consequently fixes the date of the Epistle to the year 57, in the third, or at the be ginning of the fourth year of the emperor Nero.

In the meantime great divisions had arisen in the church of Corinth, and a strong party had been formed against Paul and the views which the converts in that city had adopted from him. That these opponents were converted Jews, who insisted on the continued obligations of obedience to the law, in opposition to the Christian liberty which St. Paul advocated, is quite evident: but it is not so clear who they were. We are inclined to take Hug's opinion, that the converted Jews who declared themselves the promulgators and defenders of the doctrines of Cephas (Peter) and James (see the note on verse 12), had, since Paul's departure, come to Corinth from different places,-to all appearance from Palestine (2 Cor. xi. 4), and could therefore boast of having had intercourse with the apostles at Jerusalem, and of an acquaintance with their principles. "They were not even," adds Hug, "of the better sort of Jews, but those who adhered to the doctrines of the Sadducees, and though they were even now converted to Christianity, while they spoke zealously in favour of the law, they were undermining the hopes of the pious, and exciting doubts against the resur rection: so that Paul, from regard to the teachers whose disciples they professed to be, was obliged to refute them from the testimony of James and Cephas." Introduction,' vol. ii. p. 371.

The disorders which attended this state of division, and the deplorable extravagancies which resulted from it, are fully described in this Epistle, and will engage our attention as we proceed through it. It appears that the Gentile converts warmly asserted, against their Jewish opponents, the soundness of the views they had received from St. Paul: but that they did not hold those views in a right spirit, or were carried away by the vehemence of their opposition, appears from the fact that the parties did not confine their dispute to words and reasonings, but that each party strove in every possible form and with the most exaggerated effect, to display in its conduct the opposite principles by which it was actuated. To this end, the Judaizing Christians needed only to practise a rigid observance of the Law, as interpreted by the traditions. We can therefore guess tolerably well what they did: although it happens that the Epistle treats chiefly of the excesses of St. Paul's own adherents, and appears to have been addressed almost exclusively

to them.

It appears that the apostle received the first distinct account of this state of affairs at Corinth from some members of the household of Chloe. He had also before this been joined by Sosthenes and Apollos (verse 1; ch. xvi. 12), who had doubtless supplied him with much information on the subject; and besides this, the Corinthians themselves had sent him a mission, consisting of Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus, with an epistle soliciting his advice on various important matters. This he not only supplies, but takes notice of the other accounts which he had received. The second Epistle will make us acquainted with some of the effects which the one now before us was instrumental in producing.

Verse 2. "Corinth."-This large and wealthy city was the metropolis of Achaia, and situated upon the isthmus of the same name which joins the Peloponnesus to the continent. Its situation was highly favourable for that commerce which ultimately rendered it one of the most wealthy and luxurious cities of the world. For being between two ports, the one of which was open to the eastern and the other to the western navigator, while its geographical situation placed it, as it were, in the centre of the civilized world, it became the point where the merchants from the three quarters of the globe met and exchanged their treasures. It was also celebrated for the Isthmian Games, to which the apostle makes some striking and remarkably appropriate allusions in his Epistles to the Corinthians. Nor should it be unnoticed that in the centre of the city there stood a famous temple of Venus, in which a thousand priestesses of the