;0 HOE.^ PAULIN.^:. 



offered above fix it to the latter sense. Lastly, the point we 

 have endeavored to make out confirms, or rather, indeed, is 

 necessary to the support of a conjecture which forms the 

 subject of a number in our observations upon the first epis- 

 tle, that the insinuation of certain of the church of Corinth, 

 that he w^ould come no more among them, was founded on 

 gome previous disappointment of their expectations. 



V. But if St. Paul had changed his purpose before the 

 writing of the first epistle, why did he defer explaining him- 

 self to the Corinthians, concerning the reason of that change, 

 until he wrote the second ? This is a very fair question ; 

 and we are able, I think, to return to it a satisfactory an- 

 swer. The real cause, and the cause at length assigned by 

 St. Paul for postponing his visit to Corinth, and not travel- 

 ling by the route wliich he had at first designed, was the 

 disorderly state of the Corinthian church at the time, and 

 the painful severities which he should have found himself 

 obliged to exercise, if he had come among them during the 

 existence of these irregularities. He was willing therefore 

 to try, before he came in person, what a letter of authorita- 

 tive objurgation would do among them, and to leave time 

 for the operation of the experiment. That was his scheme 

 in writing the first epistle. But it was not for him. to ac- 

 quaint them with the scheme. After the epistle had pro- 

 duced its effect — and to the utmost extent, as it should seem, 

 of the apostle's hopes — when he had wrought in them a deep 

 sense of their fault, and an almost passionate solicitude to 

 restore themselves to the approbation of their teacher ; when 

 Titus, chap. 7:6, 7, 11, had brought him intelligence "of 

 their earnest desire, their mourning, their fervent mind tow- 

 ards him, of their sorrow and their penitence ; what careful- 

 ness, what clearing of themselves, what indignation, what 

 fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what revenge," his 

 letter and the general concern occasioned by it had excited 

 among them, he then opens himself fully upon the subject 

 The affectionate mind of the apostle is touched by this return 



