/IRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 41 



his ears : '' It is rejjortcd 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 pufled up, and have not rather mourned, that 

 he that hath done this deed might be taken away from 

 among you." 5:1,2. Their going to law before the judica- 

 ture of the countiy, rather than arbitrate and adjust their 

 disputes among themselves, which St. Paul animadverts 

 upon with his usual plainness, was not intimated to him in 

 the letter^ because he tells them his opinion of this conduct 

 before he comes to the contents of the letter. Their litig- 

 iousness is censured by St. Paul in the sixth chapter of his 

 epistle, and it is only at the beginning of the seventh chap- 

 ter that he proceeds upon the articles which he fomid in 

 their letter ; and he proceeds upon them with this preface : 

 " Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me," 

 7:1, which introduction he would not have used if he had 

 been already discussing any of the subjects concerning which 

 they had written. Their irregularities in celebrating the 

 Lord's supper, and the utter perversion of the institution 

 which ensued, were not in the letter, as is evident from the 

 terms in which St. Paul mentions the notice he had received 

 of it : " Now in this that I declare unto you, I praise you 

 not, that ye come together not for the better, but for the 

 worse. For first of all, when ye come together in the church, 

 / hear that there be divisions among you ; and I ijartly be- 

 lieve it." Now that the Corinthians should, in their own 

 letter, exhibit the fair side of their conduct to the apostle, 

 and conceal from him the faults of their behavior, was ex- 

 tremely natural, and extremely p-'obable ; but it was a dis- 

 tinction which would not, I think, have easily occurred to 

 the author of a forgery ; and much less likely is it, that i\ 

 should have entered into his thoughts to make the distinc- 

 tion appear in the way in which it does appear, namely, 

 not by the ciiglnal letter, not by any express observation 

 upon it in the answer, but distantly by marks perceivable in 

 17* 



