the privileges of the sons of God, see that this your light may shine , hut remember to use with caution and moderation extraor- dinary circumstances. — Y. g.] — r axovsi, sees , hears) in com- mon life, while I am unable to prevent it.
7. r'lm [iri vtfepulpwftai, lest I should he exalted) In all the things, which Paul did, and which rendered him great, beloved, and admired among men, he might be less worthy of praise [elated] than in those, of which he was alone conscious to himself. The mind is vain and weak, which applauds itself on account of the applause of men. The better things [the preferable objects of desire] are within. [ How dangerous must the exaltation of one’s self be, when the apostle required so much restraint. — Y. g.] — (rxoXo%[) Hesychius : c'xoAotfss, o^ea ^uAa opQa , gravpo/j a sharp pointed stake is denoted ; comp, the lxx., Num. xxxiii. 55 ; Ez. xxviii. 24. This general word is presently explained in a particular manner by those buffetings : and this double explana- tion does not require a third, variously attempted by those, who give a wrong meaning to the buffetings. — (tap*/) in the flesh) The ablative case, in the flesh , for the purpose of macerating the flesh. The same case occurs, 1 Pet. iii. 18, iv. 1, 6. This weakness was greater than all those, which had been enumerated in the preceding chapter, and that he might give an account of this weakness, he considered it necessary to mention revela- tions.— "Ay ysXog the messenger of Satan) Paul, after
having had some experience of the state of the blessed angels , begins now to discover an angel of a different description. The word Sami' only occurs in the lxx. twice or thrice, and that too as indeclinable ; but Sarnvaj is declined in thirty-four places in the New Testament, and among these, nine times by Paul; and in this single passage it is used as an indeclinable noun, by a well- weighed apocope [the loss of a syllable at the end], certainly not without good reason. "A yyeXog Sarny then does not seem in this passage to be in apposition, as if it were said the angel Satan for the devil, for the devil is nowhere called an angel, but he him- self has his angels. Therefore Satan is either a proper name in the genitive or an adjective in the nominative, so that there is denoted either an angel sent by Satan or a very destructive angel , an angel like Satan himself or the devil, as distinguished from the fact of his being sent by Satan. The ambiguity seems to