58 HORM PAULINA. 



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the coming of Titus." Yet even here, I think, no one will 



contend that St. Paul's coming to Macedonia, or being in 

 Macedonia, was the principal thing intended to be told ; or 

 that the telling of it, indeed, was any part of the intention 

 with which the text was written ; or that the mention even 

 of the name of Macedonia was not purely incidental, in the 

 description of those tumultuous sorrows with which the 

 writer's mind had been lately agitated, and from which he 

 was relieved by the coming of Titus. The first five verses 

 of the eighth chapter, which commend the liberality of the 

 Macedonian churches, do not, in my opinion, by themselves, 

 prove St. Paul to have been at Macedonia at the time of 

 writing the epistle. 



2. In the first epistle, St. Paul denounces a severe cen 

 sure against an incestuous marriage which had taken place 

 among the Corinthian converts, with the connivance, not to 

 say with the approbation, of the church ; and enjoins the 

 church to purge itself of this scandal by expelling the offender 

 from its society : "It is reported commonly that there is for- 

 nication 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 rather 

 mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken 

 away from among you. For I verily, as absent in body, but 

 present in spirit, have judged already as though I were pres- 

 ent, concerning him that hath so done this deed, in the name 

 of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, 

 and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to 

 deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, 

 that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." 

 1 Cor. 5 : 1-5. In the second epistle, we find this sentence 

 executed, and the offender to be so affected with the punish- 

 ment that St. Paul now intercedes for his restoration : " Suf- 

 ficient to such a man is this punishment, w^hich was inflioted 

 of many. So that contrariwise, ye ought rather to forgive 

 him, and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should be 



