last Titus meets him with the cheering news reflected in 2 Cor. i.- vii. As already shown, a space of but a few weeks elapsed between Paul’s writing 1 Cor. and leaving Ephesus for Troas.
We have traced Paul’s steps through the months separating the two Epistles, and neither time nor occasion is found for an interjected trip to Corinth. We are thrown back upon the period before the first Epistle. Yet 1 Cor. makes no express reference to any recent visit ; and its silence, prima facie, negatives the supposition of any such occurrence. There are circumstances however which relieve this adverse presumption. For one thing, the Jost letter had inter- vened; this other Epistie, not our 1 Cor., was the sequel! of the visit in question. The main thing that occupied Paul’s mind on that occasion, and which caused the “grief” referred to in 2 Cor. ii. 1, had been the impurity of life manifest within the Church. Against this he had given solemn warning, while forbearing discipline (2 Cor. xiii, 2). It was with a moral situation of this kind that the missing letter dealt (1 Cor. v. 9-12) ; the alarm it expressed is still felt in 1 Cor. vi., x.,xv. 33 f. Meantime, the horrible case of incest has eclipsed pre- vious transgressions ; and while Paul reaffirms the general directions already sent and prompted (ex hypothesi) by personal observation, he fastens his attention upon the new criminality just brought to his ears. That previous meeting had been so unhappy for both parties that Paul might well avoid allusion to it; it was an experience he was resolved never to repeat (2 Cor. ii. 1, xii, 20). If he comes again under like conditions, it will be “rod” in hand (1 Cor, iv. 21, 2 Cor. xiii. 2). His forbearance had been misconstrued; some of the offenders were emboldened to defy him, and his Judaistic sup- planters subsequently contrasted the severity of his letters with his timidity in face of the mutineers (2 Cor. x. 6, xiii. 1-7)—a taunt which drags from him the allusions of the second Epistle. After all, 1 Cor. is not without traces of the second visit. Nothing so well accounts for the doubts of Paul’s disciplinary power hinted in 1 Cor. iv. 18-21 as the encounter supposed. When after his threat, and while the plague grows in virulence (1 Cor. v.) and his opponents challenge him to come (iv. 18)—-still more, when he has announced, while fulminat- ing anathemas on paper (v. 4 f., xvi. 22), that his return is postponed, without any imperative reason given for delay (xvi. 5 ff.)—after all this, it is no wonder that even his friends felt themselves aggrieved, and that the most damaging constructions were put upon the Apostle’s changes of plan (2 Cor. i. 15 ff., x. 9 ff., xiii. 3 ff.). At last he explains, in 2 Cor., that the postponement is due to his continued’ desire to “spare’’ instead of striking. If, notwithstanding these.