God. To the objection, as urged by believers, that his preach- ing was too elementary, he answered, it was adapted to their state. He could only speak to them as to children.
They were habes in Christy that is, children in Christian knowledge and experience. This idea he expresses by saying they were not spiritual but carnal. Now as all Christians are spiritual, in the sense in which that term is used in the preceding chapter, to say that men are not spiritual in that sense, would be to say they are not Christians. Here, how- ever, the apostle tells those whom he admits to be Christians, and whom he calls brethren, that they are not spiritual. He must use the word therefore in a modified sense. This is a very common usage. When we predicate spirituality of a Christian as compared to other Christians, we mean that he is eminently spiritual. But when the distinction is between Christians and the world, then every Christian is said to be spiritual. In like manner we speak of some Christians as worldly or carnal, without intending to deny that they are Christians. It is obvious that the apostle uses the terms here in the same manner. He is not speaking of Christians as dis- tinguished from the world, but of one class of Christians as distinguished from another.
2. I have fed you with milk and not with meat ; for hitherto ye were not able (to bear it), neither yet now are ye able.
As they were children, he had treated them accordingly. He had fed them with milk ; literally, * I gave you milk to drink and not meat.' A concise form of expression. What is the distinction which the apostle here makes between milk and meat ? It is evidently not the distinction between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God. Paul did not preach the wisdom of the world to babes in Christ, and the wisdom of God to advanced Christians. Neither does he sanction any thing of the nature of the Disciplina Arca?ii, or doctrine of the hidden essence of Christianity, which was in- troduced in later times. For the sake either of conciliating the heathen, or of preventing beginners from forming false notions of the gospel, it became common deliberately to con- ceal the truth. This is the foundation of the doctrine of re- serve, as it is called, which the Romish church has so exten-