Stephanas was one of the three messengers sent to inform the apostle of the state of the church in Corinth, and to de- hver the letter to which reference is made, ch. 7, 1, comp. 16, 15. 17. Paul says he baptized the household or family of Ste- phanas. Under the old dispensation, whenever any one pro- fessed Judaism or entered into covenant with God as one of his people, all his children and dependents, that is, all to whom he stood in a representative relation, were included in the covenant and received circumcision as its sign. In like man- ner under the gospel, when a Jew or Gentile joined the Christian church, his children received baptism and were re- cognized as members of the Christian church. Compare Acts 16, 15 and 33.
Besides I know not whether I baptized any other. The nature of inspiration is to be learnt from the declarations of the Scriptures and from the facts therein recorded. From these sources we learn that it was an influence which rendered its recipients infalHble, but it did not render them omniscient. They were preserved from asserting error, but they were not enabled either to know or to remember all things.
PauVs defence of his manner of preaching. Vs. 17-31.
The apostle having been led to mention incidentally that he had baptized very few persons in Corinth, assigns as the reason of that fact that his great official duty was to preach the gospel. This naturally led him to speak of the manner of preaching. It was one of the objections urged against him that he did not preach " with the wisdom of words," that is, that he did not preach the doctrines taught by human reason, which he calls the wisdom of the world. Through the re- mainder of this, and the whole of the following chapter, he assigns his reasons for thus renouncing the wisdom of the world, — and resumes the subject of the divisions existing in the church of Corinth at the beginning of the third chapter. 1. His first reason for not teaching human wisdom is that God had pronounced all such wisdom to be folly, vs. 19. 20. 2. Experience had proved the insufficiency of human wisdom to lead men to a saving knowhedge of God, v. 21. 3. God had ordained the gospel to be the great means of salvation, vs. 21-25. 4. The experience of the Corinthians themselves showed that it was not wisdom nor any other human distinc- tion that secured the salvation of men. Human wisdom could neither discover the method of salvation, nor secure compli-