sense, to express undue excitement or extravaGjance. When Festns, Acts 26, 24, said to the apostle, " Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad," he did not mean that he was really insane. And when our Lord's zeal provoked his friends to say of him, "He is beside himself," Mark 3, 21, they certainly did not intend to charge him with insanity. There is therefore no necessity for taking the word here in its strict sense, and assuming that Paul's enemies had accused him of being out of his mind. It is the more natural to take the word in a wider sense here, because the opposite term, aaxfypovew, (to be soher^ or scme^) and its cognates, are much more frequently used to express moderation and discre- tion than sanity in the strict sense of that word. The apostle means to say that whether he was extravagant or moderate, whether he exceeded the bounds of discretion, as his enemies asserted, or whether he was sober and discreet, it was not for himself; he had in view only the glory of God and the good of his church, and therefore the Corinthians niight safely boast of him, i. e. vindicate him from the aspersions of the false teachers. Whether the extravagance or insanity here referred to, consisted in his sell-commendation, or in his zeal and devotion, is matter of dispute. The former is the more probable, both because in the immediate context he had been speaking of that subject, and because in chai)ters 11 and 12 he speaks so much at large of his commending himself, al- though forced upon him, as a kind of folly or insanity. In those chapters the acjipoavvT]^ (the icant of mhul.) of which he accuses himself, was selt-praise ; and the a(D(f>poavvr] [sobemess or sanity) which he desired to exhibit was moderation in speaking of himself and of his labours. Paul, therefore, in this passage, is most naturally understood to mean, that whether he praised himself or whether he did not, whether the manner in which he had spoken of himself be considered as acfipoa-vvr] or aiixfipoavvr], as insanity or sobriety, he spoke not for himself, but for God and his people.
14. For the love of Christ constrameth us; be- cause we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead.
' In whatever I do,' says the apostle, ' I act for God and his church, for the love of Christ constraineth me.' The con-