SEGONl^ EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. G7 



•ji the history, he must have changed that plan before this 

 time. But, from the seventeenth verse of the fourth chap- 

 ter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, we discover that 

 Timothy had been sent away from Ephesus before that epis- 

 tle was written : "■ For this cause have I sent unto you Ti 

 motheus, who is my beloved son." The change therefore 

 of St. Paul's resolution, which was prior to the sending 

 away of Timothy, was necessarily prior to the writing of 

 the first epistle to the Corinthians. 



Thus stands the order of dates, as collected from the his- 

 tory, compared with the first epistle. Now let us inquire, 

 secondly, how this matter is represented in the epistle before 

 us. In the sixteenth verse of the first chapter of this epistle, 

 St. Paul speaks of the intention which he had once enter- 

 tained of visiting Achaia in his way to Macedon : " In this 

 confidence I was minded to come unto you before, that ye 

 might have a second benefit : and to pass by you into Mac- 

 edonia." After protesting, in the seventeenth verse, against 

 any evil construction that might be put upon his laying 

 aside of this intention, in the twenty-third verse he discloses 

 the cause of it : " Moreover I call God for a record upon my 

 soul, that to spare you I came not as yet unto Corinth." 

 And then he proceeds as follows : " But I determined this 

 with myself, that I would not come again to you in heavi- 

 ness. For if I make you sorry, who is he then that maketh 

 me glad, but the same which is made sorry by me ? A?id 

 I ivrote this same unto you, lest, when I came, I should 

 have sorrow from them of whom I ought to rejoice ; having 

 confidence in you all, that my joy is the joy of you all. For 

 out of much affliction and anguish of heart I ivrote unti 

 you tvith many tears; not that ye should be grieved, but 

 that ye might know the love which I have more abundant- 

 ly unto you. But if any have caused grief, he hath not 

 grieved me, but in part, that I may not overcharge you all. 

 Sufficient to suck a man is this punishment, which was in- 

 flicted of many." In this quotation, let the reader first di 



