1 Corinthians 1:17

1599 Geneva Bible

Footnotes

1. 1 Corinthians 1:17 The taking away of an objection: that he gave not himself to baptize many amongst them: not for the contempt of Baptism, but because he was chiefly occupied in delivering the doctrine, and committed them that received his doctrine to others to be baptized, whereof he had store. And so he declared sufficiently how far he was from all ambition: whereas on the other side they whom he reprehendeth, as though they gathered disciples unto themselves and not to Christ, bragged most ambitiously of numbers, which they had baptized.
2. 1 Corinthians 1:17 Now he turneth himself to the doctors themselves, which pleased themselves in brave and ambitious eloquence, to the end that they might draw more disciples after them. He confesseth plainly that he was unlike unto them, opposing gravely as it became an Apostle, his example against their perverse judgments: So that this is another place of this Epistle, touching the observing of a godly simplicity, both in words and sentences in teaching of the Gospel.
3. 1 Corinthians 1:17 With eloquence: which Paul casteth off from him not only, as not necessary, but also as flat contrary to the office of his Apostleship: and yet had Paul his kind of eloquence, but it was heavenly, not of man, and void of painted words.
4. 1 Corinthians 1:17 The reason why he used not the pomp of words and painted speech: because it was God’s will to bring the world to his obedience by that way, whereby the most idots amongst men might understand, that this work was done of God himself without the art of man. Therefore as salvation is set forth unto us in the Gospel by the cross of Christ, then which nothing is more contemptible, and more far from life, so God would have the manner of the preaching of the cross most different from those means, with which men do use to draw and entice others, either to hear or believe: therefore it pleased him by a certain kind of most wise folly, to triumph over the most foolish wisdom of the world, as he had said before by Isaiah: that he would. And hereby this we may gather, that both those doctors which were puffed up with ambitious eloquence, and also their hearers strayed far away from the end and mark of their vocation.