FIRST EJISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 39 



CHAPTER III. 



THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 



I. Before we proceed to compare this epistle with tho 

 history, or with any other epistle, we will employ one num- 

 ber 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 chap- 

 ter, "Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto 

 me," it appears that this letter to the Corinthians was writ- 

 ten by St. Paul in answer to one which he had received 

 from them ; and that the seventh, and some of the follow- 

 ing chapters, are taken up in resolving certain doubts, and 

 regulating certain points of order, concerning which the Co- 

 rinthians had in their letter consulted him. This alone is 

 a circumstance considerably in favor 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 uncoi' 

 verted wives, of wives having unconverted husbands ; that 

 case where the unconverted party chooses to separate. wher« 

 he chooses to continue the union ; .he efiect which their 

 conversion produced upon their prior state, of circumcision, 

 of slavery ; the eating of things oflered to idols, as it was in 



