to the First Epistle to the Corinthians, to allow | the two Epistles to the Corinthians show that the time in the interval for Aquila and Priscilla's return from Ephesus to Rome. Before we dismiss these two persons, we may take notice of the terms of commendation in which St. Paul describes them, and of the agreement of that encomium with the history. My helpers in Christ Jesus, who have for my life laid down their necks; unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles." In the eighteenth chapter of the Acts, we are informed that Aquila and Priscilla were Jews; that St. Paul first met with them at Corinth; that for some time he abode in the same house with them; shat St. Paul's contention at Corinth was with the unbelieving Jews, who at first "opposed and blasphemed, and afterwards with one accord raised an insurrection against him;" that Aquila and Priscilla adhered, we may conclude, to St. Paul throughout this whole contest; for, when he left the city, they went with him, Acts xviii. 18. Under these circumstances, it is highly probable that they should be involved in the dangers and persecutions which St. Paul underwent from the Jews, being themselves Jews; and, by adhering to St. Paul in this dispute, deserters, as they would be accounted, of the Jewish cause. Farther, as they, though Jews, were assisting to St. Paul in preaching to the Gentiles at Corinth, they had taken a decided part in the great controversy of that day, the admission of the Gentiles to a parity of religious situation with the Jews. For this conduct alone, if there was no other reason, they may seem to have been entitled to "thanks froin the churches of the Gentiles." They were Jews taking part with Gentiles. Yet is all this so indirectly intimated, or rather so much of it left to inference, in the account given in the Acts, that I do not think it probable that a forger either could or would have drawn his representation from thence; and still less probable do I think it, that, without having seen the Acts, he could, by mere accident and without truth for his guide, have delivered a representation so conformable to the circumstances there recorded. The two congruities last adduced, depended upon the time, the two following regard the place, of the epistle. 1. Chap. xvi. 23. "Erastus, the chamberlain of the city, saluteth you"-of what city? We have seen, that is, we have inferred from circumstances found in the epistle, compared with circumstances found in the Acts of the Apostles, and in the two epistles to the Corinthians, that our epistle was written during St. Paul's second visit to the peninsula of Greece. Again, as St. Paul, in his epistle to the church of Corinth, 1 Cor. xvi. 3, speaks of a collection going on in that city, and of his desire that it might be ready against he came thither; and as in this epistle he speaks of that collection being ready, it follows that the epistle was written either whilst he was at Corinth, or after he had been there. Thirdly, since St. Paul speaks in this epistle of his journey to Jerusalem, as about instantly to take place; and as we learn, Acts xx. 3, that his design and attempt was to sail upon that journey immediately from Greece, properly so called, i. e. as distinguished from Macedonia; it is probable that he was in this country when he wrote the epistle, in which he speaks of himself as upon the eve of setting out. If in Greece, he was most likely at Corinth; for principal end of his coming into Greece, was to visit that city, where he had founded a church. Certainly we know no place in Greece in which his presence was so probable; at least, the placing of him at Corinth satisfics every circumstance, Now that Erastus was an inhabitant of Corinth, or had some connexion with Corinth, is rendered a fair subject of presumption, by that which is accidentally said of him in the Second Epistle to Timothy, chap. iii. 20. "Erastus abode at Corinth." St. Paul complains of his solitude, and is telling Timothy what was become of his companions: "Erastus abode at Corinth; but Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick." Erastus was one of those who had attended St. Paul in his travels, Acts xix. 22: and when those travels had, upon some occasion, brought our apostle and his train to Corinth, Erastus staid there, for no reason so probable, as that it was his home. I allow that this coincidence, is not so precise as some others, yet I think it too clear to be produced by accident: for, of the many places, which this same epistle has assigned to different persons, and the innumerable others which it might have mentioned, how came it to fix upon Corinth for Erastus? And, as far as it is a coincidence, it is certainly undesigned on the part of the author of the Epistle to the Romans: because he has not told us of what city Erastus was the chamberlain; or, which is the same thing, from what city the epistle was written, the setting forth of which was absolutely necessary to the display of the coincidence, if any such display had been thought of: nor could the author of the Epistle to Timothy leave Erastus at Corinth, from any thing he might have read in the Epistle to the Romans, because Corinth is nowhere in that epistle mentioned either by name or description. 2. Chap. xvi. 1-3. "I commend unto you Phoebe, our sister, which is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea, that ye receive her in the Lord, as becometh saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever business she hath need of you; for she hath been a succourer of many, and of myself also." Cenchrea adjoined to Corinth; St. Paul therefore, at the time of writing the letter, was in the neighbourhood of the woman whom he thus recommends. But, farther, that St. Paul had before this been at Cenchrea itself, appears from the eighteenth chapter of the Acts; and appears by a circumstance as incidental, and as unlike design, as any that can be imagined. "Paul after this tarried there (viz. at Corinth,) yet a good while, and then took his leave of his brethren, and sailed thence into Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila, having shorn his head in Cenchrea, for he had a vow." xviii. 18. The shaving of the head denoted the expiration of the Nazaritic vow. The historian, therefore, by the mention of this circumstance, virtually tells us that St. Paul's vow was expired before he set forward upon his voyage, having deferred probably his departure until he should be released from the restrictions under which his vow laid him. Shall we say that the author of the Acts of the Apostles feigned this anecdote of St. Paul at Cenchrea, because he had read in the Epistle to the Romans that "Phoebe, a servant of the church of Cenchrea, had been a succourer of many, and of him also?" or shall we say that the author of the Epistle to the Romans, out of his own imagination, created Phoebe "a servant of the church at Cenchrea," because he read in the Acts of the Apostles that Paul had "shorn his head" in that place? tr No. III. Chap. i. 13. "Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, but was let hitherto, that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles." Again, xv. 23, 24: "But now having no more place in these parts, and having a great desire these many years (AA, oftentimes,) to come unto you, whensoever I take my journey into Spain I will come to you; for I trust o see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you: but now I go up unto Jerusalem to minister to the saints. When, therefore, I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain." With these passages compare Acts xix. 21. "After these things were ended, (viz. at Ephesus,) Paul purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem; saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome." If the passage in the epistle was taken from that in the Acts, why was Spain put in? If the passage in the Acts was taken from that in the epistle, why was Spain left out? If the two passages were unknown to each other, nothing can account for their conformity but truth. Whether we suppose the history and the epistle to be alike fictitious, or the history to be true but the letter spurious, or the letter to be genuine but the history a fable, the meeting with this circumstance in both, if neither borrowed it from the other, is upon all these suppositions equally inexplicable. Chap. xv. 19. "So that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the Gospel of Christ." I do not think that these words necessarily import that St. Paul had penetrated into Illyricum, or preached the Gospel in that province; but raLet it be observed that our epistle purports to ther that he had come to the confines of Illyricum, have been written at the conclusion of St. Paul's (μizę T8 IAλugis,) and that these confines were second journey into Greece: that the quotation the external boundary of his travels. St. Paul from the Acts contains words said to have been considers Jerusalem as the centre, and is here spoken by St. Paul at Ephesus, some time before viewing the circumference to which his travels he set forwards upon that journey. Now I con- extended. The form of expression in the original tend that it is impossible that two independent conveys this idea—απο Ιερκσαλήμ και κύκλω μέχρι fictions should have attributed to St. Paul the TS IXAUX. Illyricum was the part of this cirsame purpose, especially a purpose so specific and cle which he mentions in an epistle to the Roparticular as this, which was not merely a general mans, because it lay in a direction from Jerusadesign of visiting Rome after he had passed lem towards that city, and pointed out to the Rothrough Macedonia and Achaia, and after he had man readers the nearest place to them, to which performed a voyage from these countries to Jeru- his travels from Jerusalem had brought him. The salem. The conformity between the history and name of Illyricum nowhere occurs in the Acts the epistle is perfect. In the first quotation from of the Apostles; no suspicion, therefore can be the epistle, we find that a design of visiting Rome received that the mention of it was borrowed from had long dwelt in the apostle's mind: in the quo- thence. Yet I think it appears, from these same tation from the Acts, we find that design ex- Acts, that St. Paul, before the time when he pressed a considerable time before the epistle was wrote his Epistle to the Romans, had reached the written. In the history, we find that the plan confines of Illyricum; or, however, that he might which St. Paul had formed was, to pass through have done so, in perfect consistency with the acMacedonia and Achaia; after that to go to Jeru- count there delivered. Illyricum adjoins upon salem; and when he had finished his visit there, Macedonia; measuring from Jerusalem towards to sail for Rome. When the epistle was written, Rome, it lies close behind it. If, therefore, St. he had executed so much of his plan, as to have Paul traversed the whole country of Macedonia, passed through Macedonia and Achaia; and was the route would necessarily bring him to the conpreparing to pursue the remainder of it, by speed- fines of Illyricum, and these confines would be ily setting out towards Jerusalem: and in this described as the extremity of his journey. Now point of his travels he tells his friends at Rome, the account of St. Paul's second visit to the that, when he had completed the business which peninsula of Greece, is contained in these words: carried him to Jerusalem, he would come to them."He departed for to go into Macedonia; and Secondly, I say, that the very inspection of the passages will satisfy us that they were not made up from one another. "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; but now I go up to Jerusalem to minister to the saints. When, therefore, I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit, 1 will come by you into Spain."-This from the epistle. "Paul purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem: saving, After I have been there, I must also see Rome."-This from the Acts. when he had gone over these parts, and had given them much exhortation, he came into Greece." Acts xx. 2. This account allows, or rather leads us to suppose, that St. Paul, in going over Macedonia (ov τα μέρη εκείνα,) had passed so far to the west, as to come into those parts of the country which were contiguous to Illyricum, if he did not enter into Illyricum itself. The history, therefore, and the epistle so far agree, and the agreement is much strengthened by a coincidence of time. At the time the epistle was written, St. Paul might say, in conformity with the history, that he had "come into Illyricum;" much before that time, he could not have said so; for, upon his former journey to Macedonia, his route No. VI. is laid down from the time of his landing at Phi- | maining part of it at Tyre, xxi. 4; and afterwards lippi to his sailing from Corinth. We trace him from Agabus at Cæsarea, xxi. 11. from Philippi to Amphipolis and Apollonia; from thence to Thessalonica; from Thessalonica to Berea; from Berea to Athens; and from Athens There is another strong remark arising from to Corinth which tract confines him to the east- the same passage in the epistle; to make which ern side of the peninsula, and therefore keeps him understood, it will be necessary to state the pas all the while at a considerable distance from Illy-sage over again, and somewhat more at length. ricum. Upon his second visit to Macedonia, the history, we have seen, leaves him at liberty. It must have been, therefore, upon that second visit, if at all, that he approached Illyricum; and this visit, we know, almost immediately preceded the writing of the epistle. It was natural that the apostle should refer to a journey which was fresh in his thoughts. No. V. Chap. xv. 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, that I may be delivered from them that do not believe, in Judæa.”With this compare Acts xx. 22, 23: "And now, behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there, save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me." "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, that I may be delivered from them that do not believe, in Judæa-that I may come unto you with joy by the will of God, and may with you be refreshed." I desire the reader to call to mind that part of St. Paul's history which took place after his arrival at Jerusalem, and which employs the seven last chapters of the Acts; and I build upon it this observation-that supposing the Epistle to the Romans to have been a forgery, and the author of the forgery to have had the Acts of the Apostles before him, and to have there seen that St. Paul, in fact, "was not delivered from the unbelieving Jews," but on the contrary, that he was taken into custody at Jerusalem, and brought to Rome a prisoner-it is next to impossible that he should have made St. Paul express expectations so contrary to what he saw had been the event; and utter prayers, with apparent hopes of success, which he must have known were frustrated in the issue. This single consideration convinces me, that no concert or confederacy whatever subsisted between the Epistle and the Acts of the Apostles; and that whatever coincidences have been or can be pointed out between them, are unsophisticated, and are the result of truth and reality. It also convinces me that the epistle was written not only in St. Paul's life-time, but before he arrived at Jerusalem; for the important events relating to him which took place after his arrival at that city, must have been known to the Christian community soon after they happened: they form the most public part of his history. But had they been known to the author of the epistle-in other words, had they then taken placethe passage which we have quoted from the epistle would not have been found there. No. VII. Let it be remarked, that it is the same journey to Jerusalem which is spoken of in these two passages; that the epistle was written immediately before St. Paul set forwards upon this journey from Achaia; that the words in the Acts were uttered by him when he had proceeded in that journey as far as Miletus, in Lesser Asia. This being remembered, I observe that the two passages, without any resemblance between them that could induce us to suspect that they were borrowed from one another, represent the state of St. Paul's mind, with respect to the event of the journey, in terms of substantial agreement. They both express his sense of danger in the approaching visit to Jerusalem: they both express the doubt which dwelt upon his thoughts concerning what might there befall him. When, in his epistle, he entreats the Roman Christians, "for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, to strive together with him in their prayers to God for him, that he might be delivered from them which do not believe, in Judæa," he sufficiently confesses his fears. In the Acts of the I now proceed to state the conformity which Apostles we see in him the same apprehensions, exists between the argument of this epistle and and the same uncertainty: "I go bound in the the history of its reputed author. It is enough for spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that this purpose to observe, that the object of the shall befall me there." The only difference is, epistle, that is, of the argumentative part of it, that in the history his thoughts are more inclined was to place the Gentile convert upon a parity of to despondency than in the epistle. In the epis- situation with the Jewish, in respect of his retle he retains his hope "that he should come ligious condition, and his rank in the divine faunto them with joy by the will of God:" in the vour. The epistle supports this point by a variety history, his mind yields to the reflection, "that of arguments; such as, that no man of either dethe Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city that scription was justified by the works of the lawbonds and afflictions awaited him." Now that his for this plain reason, that no man had performed fears should be greater, and his hopes less, in this them; that it became therefore necessary to apstage of his journey than when he wrote his epis-point another medium or condition of justification, tle, that is, when he first set out upon it, is no other alteration than might well be expected; since those prophetic intimations to which he refers, when he says, "the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city," had probably been received by him in the course of his journey, and were probably similar to what we know he received in the re in which new medium the Jewish peculiarity was merged and lost; that Abraham's own justification was anterior to the law, and independent of it: that the Jewish converts were to consider the law as now dead, and themselves as married to another; that what the law in truth could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God had : This Another adaptation, and somewhat of the same kind, is the following: done by sending his Son; that God had rejected brethren, that the gospel which was preached of the unbelieving Jews, and had substituted in their me, is not after man; for I neither received it of place a society of believers in Christ, collected in- man, neither was I taught it but by the revelation differently from Jews and Gentiles. Soon after of Jesus Christ."-ch. i. 11, 12. ́“I am afraid, the writing of this epistle, St. Paul, agreeably to lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.”— the intention intimated in the epistle itself, took iv. 11, 12. "I desire to be present with you now, his journey to Jerusalem. The day after he ar- for I stand in doubt of you."-iv. 20. “ Behold, I, rived there, he was introduced to the church. Paul, say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, What passed at this interview is thus related, Christ shall profit you nothing."-v. 2. Acts xxi. 19: "When he had saluted them, he de- persuasion cometh not of him that called you."clared particularly what things God had wrought v.8. This is the style in which he accosts the among the Gentiles by his ministry and when Galatians. In the epistle to the converts of Rome, they heard it, they glorified the Lord: and said where his authority was not established, nor his unto him, thou seest, brother, how many thou- person known, he puts the same points entirely sands of Jews there are which believe; and they upon argument. The perusal of the epistle will are all zealous of the law; and they are informed prove this to the satisfaction of every reader: and, of thee, that thou teachest all the Jews which are as the observation relates to the whole contents of among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying, that the epistle, I forbear adducing separate extracts. they ought not to circumcise their children, nei- I repeat, therefore, that we have pointed out a disther to walk after the customs." St. Paul distinction in the two epistles, suited to the relation claimed the charge: but there must have been in which the author stood to his different corressomething to have led to it. Now it is only to pondents. suppose that St. Paul openly professed the principles which the epistle contains; that, in the course of his ministry, he had uttered the senti- 2. The Jews, we know, were very numerous ments which he is here made to write: and the at Rome, and probably formed a principal part matter is accounted for. Concerning the accusa- amongst the new converts; so much so, that the tion which public rumour had brought against Christians seem to have been known at Rome him to Jerusalem, I will not say that it was just; rather as a denomination of Jews, than as any but I will say, that if he was the author of the thing else. In an epistle consequently to the Roepistle before us, and if his preaching was con- man believers, the point to be endeavoured after sistent with his writing, it was extremely natural: by St. Paul was to reconcile the Jewish converts for though it be not a necessary, surely it is an to the opinion, that the Gentiles were admitted by easy inference, that if the Gentile convert, who God to a parity of religious situation with themdid not observe the law of Moses, held as advan-selves, and that without their being bound by the tageous a situation in his religious interests as the Jewish convert who did, there could be no strong reason for observing that law at all. The remonstrance therefore of the church of Jerusalem, and the report which occasioned it, were founded in no very violent misconstruction of the apostle's doctrine. His reception at Jerusalem was exactly what I should have expected the author of this epistle to have met with. I am entitled therefore to argue, that a separate narrative of effects experienced by St. Paul, similar to what a person might be expected to experience who held the doctrines advanced in this epistle, forms a proof that he did hold these doctrines; and that the epistle bearing his name, in which such doctrines are laid down, actually proceeded from him. No. VIII. This number is supplemental to the former. I propose to point out in it two particulars in the conduct of the argument, perfectly adapted to the historical circumstances under which the epistle was written; which yet are free from all appearance of contrivance, and which it would not, I think, have entered into the mind of a sophist to contrive. 1. The Epistle to the Galatians relates to the same general question as the Epistle to the Romans. St. Paul had founded the church of Galatia; at Rome, he had never been. Observe now a difference in his manner of treating of the same subject, corresponding with this difference in his situation. In the Epistle to the Galatians he puts the point in a great measure upon authority: "I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ, unto another Gospel.”—Gal. i. 6. “I certify you, law of Moses. The Gentile converts would probably accede to this opinion very readily. In this epistle, therefore, though directed to the Roman church in general, it is in truth a Jew writing to Jews. Accordingly you will take notice, that as often as his argument leads him to say any thing derogatory from the Jewish institution, he constantly follows it by a softening clause. Having (ii. 28, 29,) pronounced, not much perhaps to the satisfaction of the native Jews, "that he is not a Jew which is one outwardly, neither that circumcision which is outward in the flesh:" he adds immediately, "What advantage then hath the Jew, or what profit is there in circumcision? Much every way." Having, in the third chapter, ver. 28, brought his argument to this formal conclusion, "that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law," he presently subjoins, ver. 31, "Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid! Yea, we establish the law." In the seventh chapter, when in the sixth verse he had advanced the bold assertion, "that now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held" in the very next verse he comes in with this healing question, "What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? God forbid! Nay, I had not known sin but by the law. Having in the following words insinuated, or rather more than insinuated, the inefficacy of the Jewish law, viii. 3, " for what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh" after a digression indeed, but that sort of a digression which he could never resist, a rapturous contemplation of his Christian hope, and which occupies the latter part of this chapter; we find him in the next, as if sensible that he had said something which would give offence, returning to his Jewish brethren in terms of the warmest affection and respect: "I say the truth in Christ Jesus; I lie not; my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart; for I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ, for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers; and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came." When, in the thirty-first and thirty-second verses of this ninth chapter, he represented to the Jews the error of even the best of their nation, by telling them that "Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, had not attained to the law of righteousness, because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law, for they stumbled at that stumbling stone," he takes care to annex to this declaration these conciliating expressions: "Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved; for I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge." Lastly, having ch. x. 20, 21, by the application of a passage in Isaiah, insinuated the most ungrateful of all propositions to a Jewish ear, the rejection of the Jewish nation, as God's peculiar people; he hastens, as it were, to qualify the intelligence of their fall by this interesting expostulation: "I say, then, hath God cast away his people, (i. e. wholly and entirely?") God forbid! for I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God hath not cast away his people, which he foreknew;" and follows this thought, throughout the whole of the eleventh chapter, in a series of reflections calculated to soothe the Jewish converts, as well as to procure from their Gentile brethren respect to the Jewish institution. Now all this is perfectly natural. In a real St. Paul, writing to real converts, it is what anxiety to bring them over to his persuasion would naturally produce; but there is an earnestness and a personality, if I may so call it, in the manner, which a cold forgery, I apprehend, would neither have conceived nor supported. CHAPTER III. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. No. I. BEFORE we proceed to compare this epistle with the history, or with any other epistle, we will employ one number in stating certain remarks applicable to our argument, which arise from a perusal of the epistle itself. By an expression in the first verse of the seventh chapter, "now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me," it appears, that this letter to the Corinthians was written by St. Paul in answer to one which he had received from them; and that the seventh, and some of the following chapters, are taken up in resolving certain doubts, and regulating certain points of order, concerning which the Corinthians had in their letter consulted him. This alone is a circum stance considerably in favour of the authenticity of the epistle; for it must have been a far-fetched contrivance in a forgery, first to have feigned the receipt of a letter from the Church of Corinth, which letter does not appear; and then to have drawn up a fictitious answer to it, relative to a great variety of doubts and inquiries, purely economical and domestic; and which, though likely enough to have occurred to an infant society, in a situation and under an institution so novel as that of a Christian Church then was, it must have very much exercised the author's invention, and could have answered no imaginable purpose of forgery, to introduce the mention of at all. Particulars of the kind we refer to, are such as the following: the rule of duty and prudence relative to entering into marriage, as applicable to virgins, to widows; the case of husbands married to unconverted wives; of wives having unconverted husbands; that case where the unconverted party chooses to separate, where he chooses to continue the union; the effect which their conversion produced upon their prior state, of circumcision, of slavery; the eating of things offered to idols, as it was in itself, as others were affected by it; the joining in idolatrous sacrifices; the decorum to be observed in their religious assemblies, the order of speaking, the silence of women, the covering or uncovering of the head, as it became men, as it became women. These subjects, with their several subdivisions, are so particular, minute, and numerous, that though they be exactly agreeable to the circumstances of the persons to whom the letter was written, nothing, I believe, but the existence and reality of those circumstances could have suggested to the writer's thoughts. But this is not the only nor the principal observation upon the correspondence between the church of Corinth and their apostle, which I wish to point out. It appears, I think, in this correspondence, that although the Corinthians had written to St. Paul, requesting his answer and his directions in the several points above enumerated, yet that they had not said one syllable about the enormities and disorders which had crept in amongst them, and in the blame of which they all shared; but that St. Paul's information concerning the irregularities then prevailing at Corinth had come round to him from other quarters. The quarrels and disputes excited by their contentious adherence to their different teachers, and by their placing of them in competition with one another, were not mentioned in their letter, but communicated to St. Paul by more private intelligence: "It hath been declared unto me, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ." (i. 11, 12.) The incestuous marriage "of a man with his father's wife," which St. Paul reprehends with so much severity in the fifth chapter of our epistle, and which was not the crime of an individual only, but a crime in which the whole church, by tolerating and conniving at it, had rendered themselves partakers, did not come to St. Paul's knowledge by the letter, but by a rumour which had reached his ears: "It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife; and ye are puffed up, and have not |