“The stress laid in the Epistle to the Colossians on the inferi- ority of those to whom the self-same name of apxal beginnings, principalities was given . . . to the One who was the true beginning, or, if we might venture on an unfamiliar use of a familiar word, the true Principality of God’s creation, may account for the prominence which the name had gained, and therefore for its use here in a message addressed to a church exposed, like that of Colosse, to the risks of angelolatry, of the substitution of lower principalities and created mediators for Him who was the Head over all things to His Church” (Plumptre). Compare Heb. xii. 2, apynyov leader.
15. Cold (yruypds). Attached to the world and actively op- posed to the Church. “This,” as Alford remarks, “as well as the opposite state of spiritual fervor, would be an intelligible and plainly-marked condition ; at all events free from the dan- ger of mixed motive and disregarded principle which belongs to the lukewarm state: inasmuch as a man in earnest, be he right or wrong, is ever a better man than one professing what he does not feel.”
Hot (Yeorés). From fw to boil or seethe. See on fervent, Acts xviii. 25.
16. Lukewarm (xdapés). Only here in the New Testa- ment.
Foremost and most numerous among the lost, Dante places those who had been content to remain neutral in the great con- test between good and evil.
‘¢ Master, what is this which now I hear ? What folk is this, which seems by pain so vanquished ?” And he to me: ‘‘ This miserable mode Maintain the melancholy souls of those Who lived withouten infamy or praise. Commingled are they with that caitiff choir Of angels, who have not rebellious been, Nor faithful were to God, but were for self. The heavens expelled them, not to be less fair ; Nor them the nethermore abyss receives, For glory none the damned would have from them.” “Inferno,” iii., 33-42,