the world1. As obedient children, " fashion yourselves in no respect according to your former lusts in your ignorance, but as he who hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation"."]
1 Gal. vi. 14. u 1 Pet. i. 14, 15.
Rom. xii. 3. For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think ; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.
IN order to obtain just views of any passage of Scripture, we must pay the strictest attention to the context. It is by the context that the precise import of the words before us must be determined. It some- times happens, however, that the misconstruction of a single word — by which I mean, the taking of a word in its more common acceptation, when it is used by the inspired writer in a more peculiar sense — will involve the whole passage in the greatest obscurity. The word translated " for" is generally used to intro- duce a reason for something immediately preceding : but in my text, as in many other parts of the Apostle's writings, I apprehend it means " moreover ;" for the Apostle is passing on to a subject unconnected with that which he had spoken of in the preceding words, except merely as he descends from a general ex- hortation to the mention of some particulars. Having recommended, in the two preceding verses, the culti- vation of general piety, as the proper improvement to be made of all the doctrines which he had before established, he descends to some particulars, which, in the state of the Roman Church at that time, he deemed of peculiar importance. There were at Rome, as well as at Corinth, many who were possessed of miraculous gifts : and some were ready to value themselves too highly on account of those gifts ; for- getting that they had received them from God, and