THE EXTENT OF MAN's IMPOTENCY.
2 Cor. iii. 5. Not that tve are sufficiejit of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves ; hut our sufficiency is of God.
COMMONLY as these words are cited, they are not easy to be satisfactorily explained. There is an evident abruptness in them : and they appear to go far beyond what the context requires. The Apostle had spoken of the success of his ministry ; and " thanked God for making manifest the savour of the knowledge of Christ by him in every place ^" He had appealed to the Corinthians, as living witnesses of the power of Christ in his ministry ; seeing that they were, in fact, " epistles of Christ, known and read of all men^." And he trusted that God would yet further manifest his power, in carrying on amongst them, and in other places, the work of men's salva- tion, through the instrumentality of his ministry''. But whilst he spoke thus, did he arrogate any thing to himself, as though these effects were produced by any powers of his own ? No : he utterly disclaimed all such pretensions ; and declared, that, so far from being able to convert others by any powers of his own, he had not of himself a sufficiency even to think a good thought : his sufficiency even for that, and much more for all his ministerial success, was from God alone.
The word which we here translate " think any thing," means also to reason^: and if it could have borne the sense of convincing by reasoning, that is the sense we should have preferred; because that
a 2 Cor. ii. 14. ^ ver. 2, 3. « ver. 4. ^ KoyiaaaQm.