An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

The worst of men sometimes his grace maketh to be the best of men; we need go no further than these very Corinthians to whom Paul writeth, Acts 18. God tells Paul, He had much people in that City, and yet of all the places in the world, you would think the preaching of the Gospel would never have done good there; but God even in this wilderness, did make to himself a pleasant garden. Paul might have wrote this, Paul once the greatest of sinners, to the Corinthians the greatest of sinners.

To open this, let us take notice of Paul his sins, his work of grace, and his serviceableness after his conversion.

To open this, let us take notice of Paul his sinnes, his work of grace, and his serviceableness after his conversion.

For his sins, how great they were he himself doth aggravate them sufficiently; ¹insomuch that he saith, he was the chiefest of all sinners, 1 Tim. 1. 15. In what sense Paul could say this truly is disputed; for it's plain, he was not a greater sinner, than such who sinned the sin against the holy Ghost. Some therefore restrain it to converted sinners, as if Paul meant, he was the greatest sinner that ever ²was converted. Others understand it thus, that he was in the number of the greatest one of the chiefest, and that seemeth most genuine. He was a blasphemer, a persecutor; the blood, sighs and groans of many Christians would witness against him. And although he saith, he did this in ignorance, yet that did not excuse him; for he confesseth himself a blasphemer, and a persecutor for all that: for this ignorance was vincible, it was affected and wilful, he had means to the contrary. Behold then here a worse sinner than Mary Magdalen, out of whom seven Devils were cast, for her sins were carnal and bodily, but Paul's sins were spiritual, and seated principally in his soul, so that as the Devils are spiritual wickednesses, thus was Paul; and because he was thus corrupted in his spirit, his disease was the more incurable. For, If the eye be dark, how great is that darkness? The profane gross sinner, he is easily convinced, he is presently apprehensive of his evil; but where sinfulness hath possessed the vital parts of the soul, the mind and the heart, what hope can remain for such an one? This made our Saviour say, The Publicans and Harlots entered the Kingdom of Heaven above the Pharisees. Now Paul he was a Pharisee, and most zealous above others for the tradition of his fathers, and therefore thought his wild zeal to be true love to God. A man then so great a sinner, and yet so self-confident, that he had all the disadvantages in the world, yet is converted, and that when he had for some while lived in such a way, being habituated and rooted in it. For, as some think, he was converted about the thirtieth year of his age.