iC HOE,^ PAULINyE. 



itself^ as others were a fleeted by it ; the joining in : dohilrous 

 sacrifices '; the decorum to be observed in their religious as- 

 semblies, 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, wdth their several subdi- 

 visions, are so particular, minute, and numerous, that though 

 they be exactly agreeable to the circumstances of the per- 

 sons to whom the letter was w^'itten, 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 

 m the several points above enumerated, yet that they had 

 not said one syllable about the enormities and disorders 

 which had crept in among 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 ex- 

 cited by their contentious adherence to their difierent teach 

 ers, and by their placing of them in competition with one 

 another, were not mentioned in their letter, but communis 

 cated to St. Paul by more private intelhgence : " It hath 

 been declared unto me of you, my brethren, hj them ivhich 

 are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among 

 you. Now this I say, that ever}^ one of you saith, I am of 

 Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ." 

 1 : 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 lette?, but by a rumor which had reached 



