its original design, but a cruel perversion of a feast of love into a means of humiliating and wounding their poorer breth- ren, V. 22. In order to show how inconsistent their conduct was with the nature of the service in which they professed to engage, the apostle recounts the original institution of the Lord's supper, vs. 23-25. From tliis account it follows, first, that the Lord's supper was designed not as an ordinary meal, but as a commemoration of the death of Christ ; secondly, that to participate in this ordinance in an imworthy manner, was an offence against his body and blood, the symbols of which were so irreverently treated ; thirdly, that no one ought to approach the Lord's table without self-examination, in order that with due preparation and with a proper understanding of the ordinance, he may receive the bread and wine as the sym- bols of Christ's body and blood, vs. 26-29. In this way they would escape the judgments which the Lord had brought upon them on account of their profanation of his table, vs. 30- 32. In conclusion, he exhorts them to use their houses for their ordinary meals, and to make the Lord's supper a real communion, vs. 33. 34.
17. Now in this that I declare (unto you) I praise (you) not, that ye come together not for the better, but for the worse.
In V. 2 he said, I praise you. His praise was consistent with grave disapprobation of many things in their condition as a church. He did not praise them for the manner in which they conducted their public worship. Their assemblies were disgraced not only by women appearing unveiled, contrary to the established rules of decorum, but also by the unfraternal and irreverent manner of celebrating the Lord's supper — and also by the disorderly manner in which they used their spir- itual gifts. These evils he takes up in their order. Having dispatched the first, he comes now to the second.
Now in this that I declare unto you* The Greek is not in thiSy but this. The passage may be rendered, Declaring jthis I do not applaud. To this, however, it is objected that
* The common Text here reads irapayyeWuv ovk etraiyu. Lachmanu and Tischendorf read TrapayyiWoi out ^iraivuv on the authority of the Mss. A. C. F. G. and others of later date, and the Syriac, Vulgate, and Ethiopic versions. The common reading is preferred by the majority of editors.