peatedly spoken of boasting as a kind of folly, something de- rogatory and painful. He expresses the same feeling here when he says it is not expedient. I will come. Our translat- ors omit the yap, for I icill come. The connection is with a thought omitted. Boasting is not expedient, (therefore I de- sist,) for I will pass to something else. What follows in the relation of the revelations made to him, was no selt-laudation, but a recital of God's goodness. Visions and revelations. The latter term is, on the one hand, more general than the former, as there might be revelations where there were no visions ; and, on the other, the latter is higher than the for- mer, as implying a disclosure of the import of the things seen. Of the Lord ; not visions of which the Lord was the object; it was not seeing the Lord that he here speaks of, but visions and revelations of which the Lord is the author. By Lord is obviously to be understood Christ, whose continued existence and divine power over the thoughts and states of the soul is hereby recognized.
2. I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell ; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell : God knoweth ;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.
He speaks of himself in the third person, " I knew a man." \yhy he does this is not clear. He narrates what had hap- pened as though he had been a spectator of the scene, perhaps because his own activity was so completely in abeyance. A inan in Christ / a man who was in Christ ; the scriptural designation of a Christian, because union with Christ makes a man a Christian. It is the one only indispensable condition of salvation ; so that all who are in Christ are saved, and all who are out of Christ perish. It is also the plain doctrine of the Bible that, so far as adults are concerned, this saving union Avith Christ is conditioned, not on any thing external, not on union with this or that external church, but on a per- sonal appropriating act of faith, by which we receive and rest on Christ alone for salvation. And still further, it is no less clearly taught that holiness of heart and life is the certain fruit and therefore the only satisfactory evidence of the genu- ineness of that faith. Above fourteen years ago. The event referred to in this verse is not the same as that which occurred