FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHiANS. 51 



lory, should have been fabricated in order to suit the char 

 acter which St. Paul gives of himself in the epistle. 



VIII. Chap. 1 : 14-17 : " I thank God that I baptized 

 none of you but Crispus and Gains, lest any should say ^.hat 

 I baptized in mine own name. And I baptized also the 

 household of Stephanas ; besides, I know not whether I 

 baptized any other. For Christ sent me not to baptize, but 

 to preach the gospel." 



It may be expected that those whom the apostle bap- 

 tized with his own hands were converts distinguished from 

 the rest by some circumstance either of eminence or of con- 

 nection with him. Accordingly, of the three names here 

 mentioned, Crispus, we find from Acts 18:8, was a " chief 

 ruler" of the Jewish synagogue at Corinth, who "believed 

 on the Lord with all his house." Gains, it appears from 

 Rom. 16 : 26, was St. Paul's host at Corinth, and the host, 

 he tells us, " of the whole church." The household of Steph- 

 anas, we read in the sixteenth chapter of this epistle, 

 were " the first-fruits of Achaia." Here, therefore, is the 

 propriety we expected ; and it is a proof of reality not to be 

 contemned ; for their names appearing in the several places 

 in which they occur, with a mark of distinction belonging 

 to each, could hardly be the efiect of chance, without an) 

 truth to direct it : and, on the other hand, to suppose that 

 they w^ere picked out from these passages, and brought to 

 gether in the text before us, in order to display a conformity 

 of names, is both improbable in itself, and is rendered more 

 feo by the purpose for which they are introduced. They 

 come in to assist St. Paul's exculpation of himself against 

 the possible charge of having assumed the character of the 

 founder of a separate religion, and with no other visible; or, 

 as I think, imaginable design.*" 



-^ Chap. 1:1: "Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ 

 through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, unto the church 

 of God which is at Corinth." The only account we have of any por- 

 8or who bore the name of Sosthenes, is found in the eighteenth chapte/ 



