sinners. To this promise the apostle appeals as a reason why- men should accept the grace oifered to them in Christ Jesus. He clothes this promise in scriptural language. He might have expressed it in any other equivalent form. But the lan- guage of the passage in Isaiah being brought to his mind by the principle of association, he adopts the form there given, without any intimation, expressed or implied, that the passage had not in the original a different application. Thus in Rom. 10, 18 he might have expressed the idea of the general proclama- tion of the gospel in his own words, but he chose to express it in the words of the nineteenth Psalm, "Their sound went into all the earth, and their Avords unto the ends of the world ; " although that Psalm relates to an entirely different subject. We are accustomed, without hesitation and almost uncon- sciously, to make a similar use of scriptural language.
3. Giving no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed.
The preceding verse is parenthetical, so that the connec- tion is with V. 1. " We beseech — giving, &c." This and the following participles are all connected with the word (Trapa- KaXovfjiev) we beseech, or exhort, and are designed to show how the apostle discharged the duties of his office. This is his de- fence. J7i nothinrj he gave offence. He so acted that no one could fairly make his conduct a ground of rejecting the gos- pel. The word TrpoaKoir-Q is properly the act of striking or stumbling; then metonymically, that at which or against which any one stumbles. In the figurative use of the word, as here employed, it means an occasion of unbelief Paul, in preaching the gospel to those to whom it was previously un- known, and whose i:)rincipal means of judging of it was the conduct of its preachers, was specially careful to avoid every thing which could prove a stumblingblock to his hearers. Although this motive has peculiar weight where the gospel is new, as among the heathen, yet every one knows that the moral power of a preacher depends almost entirely on the conviction which the peo})le have of his sincerity and of the purity of his motives. This is a source of power for which neither learning nor talents can compensate. That the mmis- try he not blamed ; or, as it is in many copies, our ministry, which gives the passage a most specific reference to himself, and is well suited to the whole connection.