that they might learn to estimate ministers aright, and not contend about them. He then contrasts himself as suffering, labouring and despised, with the false teachers and their fol- lowers, and exhorts the Corinthians to be followers of him, and intimates his apprehension that he would have to come to them with a rod, 4, 1-21. This is the end of that portion of the epistle which relates to the divisions existing in the church.
The second evil which it was the design of this epistle to correct, was the remissness of the Corinthians in the exercise of church discipline. Fornication was not only tolerated, but they allowed a man who had married his father's wife to retain his standing in the church. Paul here interferes, and in the exercise of his apostolical authority, not only pronounces on this incestuous person a sentence of excommunication, but delivers him to Satan, 5,1-5. He enforces on the church the general duty to exclude immoral members from their communion, 5, 6-13.
Thirdly, the practice which some of them had introduced of going to law before heathen magistrates, he severely con- demns, 6, 1-11. Fourthly, the principle that all things are lawful, which the apostle had often uttered in reference to the ceremonial distinction between clean and unclean meats, some of the Corinthians had perverted as an argument to prove that fornication is a matter of indifference. The apostle shows the fallacy of this argument, and assures them that no sin is so great a desecration of the body, or more fatal to its union with Christ, and participation of the benefits of redemption, 6, 12-20.
Fifthly, marriage was another subject about which the minds of the Corinthians were disturbed, and on which they sought the advice of the apostle. They wished him to tell them whether marriage was obligatory, or lawful, or expedi- ent ; whether divorce or separation was allowable ; and espe- cially whether a Christian could consistently remain in the conjugal relation with a heathen. All these questions are an- swered in the seventh chapter, in wliich the apostle lays down the principles which are applicable to all cases of conscience in reference to that subject, 7, 1-40.