through me, — and sealed my ministry by his own Power, and given me the earnest of his spirit, which through me ye also have received, ought to have been my sacred protection against the levity and injustice of evil thoughts."

"No man," said Jesus, "who shall do a miracle in my name, can lightly speak evil of me.”*

"No man," implies St. Paul, "who has received a spiritual blessing at my hands, in whose service God has used me as His instrument, should lightly conceive evil of me."

*Mark ix. 39.

SECTION II.

ST. PAUL'S RESTORATION OF THE PENITENT SINNER. THE SALVATION OF FORGIVENESS. HIS THANKFULNESS THAT THE GOSPEL LIGHT HAD BROUGHT HEALING AND REPENTance, and not aggravated sin.—simple truthfulness HIS ONLY COMPETENCY FOR A SAFE ADMINISTRATION OF GOD'S TRUTH. LETTER AND SPIRIT.

CHAPS. II. 5 17-III. 1-18.

II. 5. BUT if a certain person hath caused grief, he hath grieved not me, but in part you, that I may not press up6 on you all. Sufficient to such an one was that punish7 ment, from the majority; so that, now, ye ought rather to forgive and comfort, lest such an one be swallowed up 8 by overmuch grief. Wherefore I beseech you to give 9 full force to your love towards him. For to this end also

I wrote, that I might know this proof of you, if ye are 10 obedient in all things. And to whom ye forgive any thing, I forgive also for if I have forgiven any thing, I have forgiven it for your sakes, in the sight of Christ, 11 that we may not be overreached by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his devices.

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And when I came to Troas, to preach the Gospel of 13 Christ, and a door was opened to me in the Lord, I had no rest in my spirit, on not finding Titus my brother, but taking my leave of them I went from thence into Macedonia.

14 Now thanks be to God who always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the odor of the 15 knowledge of Himself, through us, in every place! For we are to God a sweet odor of Christ in those who are 16 saving, and in those who are losing themselves; in the one the odor of death unto death, and in the other the odor of life unto life. And who is adequate to these 17 things? For we are not as the many who make a traffic of the Word of God; but as out of sincerity, as from God, before the face of God, we speak in Christ.

III. 1. ARE we beginning again to recommend ourselves? Or do we need, as do some, recommendatory letters to 2 you, or recommendatory letters from you? Ye yourselves are our Epistle, written in our hearts, known and 3 read by all men, manifestly shown to be the Epistle of Christ, administered by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on 4 the fleshly tablets of the heart. And we have this con5 fidence through Christ in God; not that we are adequate

of ourselves to reckon on any thing, as from ourselves, 6 but our adequacy is from God, -— who hath made us competent ministers of the New Covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth, and the spirit mak7 eth alive. And if the administration of death, in the letter, engraven on stones, was made in glory, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look upon the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance, a glory 8 that was to be done away, - how shall not the adminis9 tration of the spirit be more glorious? For if the administration of condemnation was glorious, much more doth the administration of justification abound in glory. 10 For even that which was made glorious is not glorious in 11 this relation, because of the glory that excelleth. For if

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that which is done away was with glory, much more that which abideth is in glory.

Having then such Hope, we use great freedom of 13 speech; and not as Moses, who put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to 14 the end [the final object] of that which is abolished: but

their minds were blinded, for until this day remains the same veil, in their reading of the Old Testament, not yet 15 lifted off because it is done away in Christ. But until

this day, when Moses is read, the veil lies upon their heart. 16 But when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken 17 away. Now the Lord is that spirit, and where the spirit 18 of the Lord is, there is Liberty. And we all with un

veiled face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are transfigured into the same image from glory to glory, as from a Lord who is Spirit.

IN the fifth chapter of his First Epistle, St. Paul had ordered a Corinthian convert who had formed an incestuous connection to be openly separated from the Church; both that the cause of Christianity should not suffer by the immorality of professors who had no practical fellowship with it, and that the guilty individual, tainted perhaps by the rotten fruit of some unholy speculation on Morals, rather than a conscious violator of God's Laws, should be awakened to reflection and self-knowledge by this act of righteous discipline. The Kingdom of God on Earth, whose essence was Righteousness, and Peace, and Joy in a holy spirit, would be reduced to a level with the Kingdoms of the World, and have no characteristic excellence to sustain it on the

Earth, if impurity might show itself in connection with the profession of Christianity. Heathenism was then in possession of the World; Corinth was the head-quarters of its corruption; Christianity had just raised the standard of the Cross in connection with Righteousness, Temperance, and a Judgment to come, the one witness for a holy God in the midst of an idolatrous licentiousness; and it would be a monstrous and suicidal act to permit the standard-bearers of that consecrated Cross to be themselves partakers of the very impurity of manners and soul, against which it was the solitary protest on the Earth. At all times the professors of a righteous cause are charged with its destinies in the world, but especially when the world is strong and adverse, and the righteous cause is but a ray of light that streaks the darkness. It was a matter of necessity that a man of Heathen heart and life presuming to lift the standard of Holiness with foul hands, should be disowned and excommunicated by the true disciples of the Cross. The language in which this act of excommunication is advised, we have already remarked upon in its place in the First Epistle, and its repetition now determines the Scriptural significance of a very important class of words: "For I verily, though absent in the body, yet present in spirit, have judged him who hath so done this deed, that in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ ye do deliver up such an one unto Satan, for the extinction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." The excom

* 1 Cor. v. 3-5.