The life and work of St. Paul

404 tKJS LI'E AND VfORK OF ST.
sentence on the incestuous offender. 1 His caso seems to have originated a
quarrel among the Corinthian Christians, of whom some sided with him and
some with his father. It is clear upon the face of things that we do not know
all the circumstances of the case, since it is all but inconceivable that, had
there been no extenuating fact, he should have found defenders for a crime
which excited the horror of the very heathen. Even those who placed'
sensuality on the same level as eating meats offered to idols, and therefore
regarded it as a matter of indifference whose view St. Paul so nobly refutes
in his first Epiatle could not have sided with this person if there were no
palliating element in his offence. And, indeed, if this had not been the case,
he would scarcely have ventured to continue in Church membership, and to
be, with his injured father, a frequenter of their love-feasts and partaker in
their sacraments. It may be quite true, and indeed the allusions to him in the
Second Epistle show, that he was weak rather than wicked. But even this
would have been no protection to him in a wrong on which Gallic himself
would have passed a sentence of death or banishment, and which the Mosaic
law had [punished with excision from the congregation. 3 There must there-
fore have been something which could be urged against the heinonsness of his
transgression, and St. Paul had distinctly to tell the Corinthians that there
was no personal feeling mixed up with Ids decision. 3 His words had evidently
implied that the Church was to be assembled, and there, with his spirit
present with them, to hand him over to Satan, so that judgment might come
on his body for the salvation of his soul. That is what he practically tells the
Church to do. Did they do it P It seems to be at least doubtful. That they
withdrew from his communion is certain ; and the veiy threat of excommuni-
cation which hung over him accompanied, as he and the Church thought
that it would be, with supernatural judgments was sufficient to plunge him
into the depths of misery and penitence. Sickness and death were at this
time very prevalent among the Corinthian converts, and St. Paul told them
that this was a direct punishment of their profanation of the Lord's Supper.
It is clear that the offender was not contumacious, and in his Second Epistle
St. Paul openly forgives him, and remits his sentence, apparently on the
ground that the Corintliians had already done so. In fact, since the desirorl
end of the man's repentance, and the purging of the Church from all complicity
with or immoral acquiescence in his crime had been attained without
resorting to extreme measures, St. Paul even exhorts the Corinthians to
console and forgive the man, and, in fact, restore him to full Church mem-
bership.
Still, it does seem as if they had not exactly followed the Apostle's
1 The theory that the offender of the second Epistle is an entirely different person,
alluded to in some lost intermediate letter, seems to me untenable, in spite of the coneensus
of eminent critics (De Wette, Bleek, Credner, Olshausen, Neander, Ewald, &c. ),
vv ho, iu some form or other, adopt such a hypothesis. I see nothing inconsistent with
the older view either in the tone of 1 Cor., or the effect it produced, or in St. Paul's
excitement, or m the movements of Titus, or in the language about the offence. Bat I
have not space to enter more fully into the
'
controversy.
Lev. ii. 11 ; Dcut. xjvii. 20.
* 2 Cor. vil 11, J|,