he then went into the house of a religious friend, close to the synagogue, and there took up his abode. But not all the Jews were involved in the condemnation of this rejection. On the contrary, one of the most eminent men among them, Crispus, either then or formerly the ruling elder of the synagogue, professed the faith of Jesus, notwithstanding its unpopularity. Along with him his whole family were baptized, and many other Corinthians received the word in the same manner. In addition to these nobly encouraging results of his devoted labors, his ardor in the cause of Jesus received a new impulse from a remarkable dream, in which the Lord appeared to him, uttering these words of high consolation,—"Fear not, but speak, and hold not thy peace; for I am with thee, and no one shall hurt thee. I have many people in this city." Under the combined influence of both natural and supernatural encouragements, he therefore remained zealously laboring in Corinth, and made that city his residence, as Luke very particularly records, for a year and six months.
"xviii. 5. [Greek: syneicheto tô logô], &c. The common reading is [Greek: pneumat']. Now since [Greek: synechesthai],
among other significations, denotes angi, maerore corripi, (see Luke 12. 50,
and the note on Matt. 4. 24,) many Commentators, as Hammond, Mill, and Wolf,
explain, "angebatur Paulus animo, dum docebat Judaeos, Jesum esse Messiam;"
viz. "since he could produce no effect among them." And they compare ver. 6.
But this interpretation is at variance with the context.
"Now this verb also signifies to incite, urge; as in 2 Cor. v. 14. Hence Beza, Pricaeus, and others, explain: 'intus et apud se aestuebat prae zeli ardore;' which interpretation I should admit, if there were not reason to suppose, from the authority of MSS. and Versions, that the true reading, (though the more difficult one,) is [Greek: lygô], of which the best interpretation, and that most suitable to the context, is the one found in the Vulg. 'instabat verbo.' For [Greek: synechesthai] denotes also to be held, occupied by anything; as in Sap. 17, 20. Herodot. 1, 17, 22. Aelian, V. H. 14, 22. This significaiion of the word being admitted, the sense will be: 'When they had approached whom Paul (who knew that combined strength is most efficacious) had expected as his assistants in promulgating the Christian doctrine, and of whom, in so large and populous a city there was need, then he applied himself closely to the work of teaching.' Kuin. (Bloomfield's Annot. p. 593.)
HIS EPISTLES WRITTEN FROM CORINTH.
The period of his residence in this city is made highly interesting and important in the history of the sacred canon, by the circumstance that here he wrote some of the first of those epistles to his various missionary charges, which constitute the most controverted and the most doctrinal portion of the New Testament. In treating of these writings, in the course of the narrative of his life, the very contracted limits now left to his biographer, will make it necessary to be much more brief in his literary history, than in that of those other apostles, whose writings have claimed and received so full a statement, under their respective
