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in itself, as others were affected by it; the joining in idolatrous facrifices; the decorum to be obferved in their religious affemblies, the order of speaking, the filence of women, the covering or uncovering of the head, as it became men, as it became woThefe fubjects, with their several fub-divifions, are so particular, minute, and numerous, that, though they be exactly agreeable to the circumftances of the perfons to whom the letter was written, nothing, I believe, but the existence and reality of thofe circumftances, could have fuggested to the writer's thoughts.

But this is not the only nor the principal obfervation upon the correfpondence between the church of Corinth and their apostle, which I wish to point out. It appears, I think, in this correfpondence, that although the Corinthians had written to St. Paul, requesting his anfwer and his directions in the feveral points above enumerated, yet that they had not faid one fyllable about the enormities and disorders which had crept in amongst them, and in the blame of which they all fhared;

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but that St. Paul's information concerning the irregularities then prevailing at Corinth, had come round to him from other quarters. The quarrels and difputes excited by their contentious adherence to their different teachers, and by their placing of them in competition with one another, were not mentioned in their letter, but communicated to St. Paul by more private intelli"It hath been declared unto me, my gence: "brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. Now this I fay, that every one of

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you faith, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, " and I of Cephas, and I of Chrift” (i. 11, 12). The incestuous marriage " of a man

with his father's wife," which St. Paul reprehends with so much severity in the fifth chapter of our epiftle, and which was not the crime of an individual only, but a crime in which the whole church, by tolerating and conniving at it, had rendered themselves, partakers, did not come to St. Paul's knowledge by the letter, but by a rumour which had reached his ears: "It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and "fuch

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"fuch fornication as is not fo much as "named among the Gentiles, that one "fhould 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" (v. I, 2). Their going to law before the judicature of the country, rather than arbitrate and adjust their disputes among themselves, which St. Paul animadverts upon with his ufual plainness, was not intimated to him in the letter, because he tells them his opinion of this conduct, before he comes to the contents of the letter. Their litigiousness is cenfured by St. Paul in the fixth chapter of his epistle, and it is only at the beginning of the feventh chapter that he proceeds upon the articles which he found in their letter; and he proceeds upon them with this preface: “Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me" (vii. 1); which introduction he would not have ufed, if he had been already difcuffing any of the subjects concerning which they had written. Their irregularities in celebrating the Lord's fupper, and the utter perversion of the institu

tion which enfued, were not in the letter, as is evident from the terms in which St. Paul mentions the notice he had received of it: "Now in this that I declare unto you, I praise you not, that ye came to

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gether not for the better, but for the "worfe; for first of all, when ye come "together in the church, I hear that there "be divifions among you, and I partly "believe it.' Now that the Corinthians should, in their own letter, exhibit the fair fide of their conduct to the Apostle, and conceal from him the faults of their behaviour, was extremely natural, and extremely probable but it was a distinction which would not, I think, have eafily occurred to the author of a forgery; and much less likely is it, that it should have entered into his thoughts to make the distinction appear in the way in which it does appear, viz. not by the original letter, not by any exprefs obfervation upon it in the answer, but diftantly by marks perceivable in the manner, or in the order, in which St. Paul takes notice of their faults.

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No. II.

Our epiftle purports to have been written after St. Paul had already been at Corinth: "I, brethren, when I came to you, came not "with excellency of speech or of wisdom" (ii. 1): and in many other places to the fame effect. It purports alfo to have been written upon the eve of another vifit to that church: "I will come to you shortly, if the "Lord will" (iv. 19); and again, "I will

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come to you when I fhall pafs through Ma❝cedonia" (xvi. 5). Now the history relates that St. Paul did in fact vifit Corinth twice; once as recorded at length in the eighteenth, and a fecond time as mentioned briefly in the twentieth chapter of the Acts. The fame history also informs us, Acts xx. 1, that it was from Ephesus St. Paul proceeded upon his fecond journey into Greece. Therefore, as the epistle purports to have been written a fhort time preceding that journey; and as St. Paul, the hiftory tells us, had refided more than two years at Ephefus before he fet out upon it, it follows that it must have been from Ephefus, to be con

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