THE

NEW TESTAMENT

OF

OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.

THE TEXT IN THE AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION:

WITH

A COMMENTARY AND CRITICAL NOTES:

BY

ADAM CLARKE, LL.D., F.S.A., ETC.

A NEW EDITION, CONDENSED, AND SUPPLEMENTED FROM THE BEST MODERN

AUTHORITIES:

BY DANIEL CURRY, LL.D.

VOLUME II.-THE EPISTLES AND REVELATION.

NEW YORK:

PHILLIPS & HUNT.

CINCINNATI:

CRANSTON & STOWE.

1884.

EDITOR'S PREFACE TO VOLUME II.

OF THE

REVISED EDITION.

THE Preface to the first volume of the Revised Edition of Clarke's Commentary on

the New Testament sets forth with sufficient fulness the principles which had been adopted respecting the whole work. But the rules there indicated, as those according to which the revision of that volume had been made, have, from the necessities of the case, led to more considerable emendations and additions than seemed to be necessary in the former portion of the work. But in respect to the editor's sympathies with the views and opinions of his author, all that is there said may be here repeated and emphasized; and the fidelity to the general doctrinal opinions of the original work has been honestly adhered to, not simply as a yoke, but gladly, as felicitously indicating the mind of the Spirit as revealed in the written word. But in bringing the work of expounding and illustrating the apostolical writings up to the higher plane on which biblical learning now stands, as compared with its position fifty years ago, very considerable modifications have seemed to be necessary, and wherever that has appeared they have been made. All these, however, it is believed, have been made along the lines of the development of truth which the original work clearly marked out and pursued to a greater extent than had been done at that date by any other writer using the English language; for, as a biblical scholar and exegete, Dr. Clarke was at least a quarter of a century—perhaps twice that time-in advance of the learning of his age. But the regions in which he was a pioneer have since been thoroughly explored, and the results, constituting a rich store of scriptural learning, duly appropriated. The reviser has sought to build the results thus obtained into the structure of evangelical and rational biblical theology, whose foundations he found so admirably made to his hands in the original. He therefore flatters himself that the now completed work of New Testament revision, while necessarily supplementary to the original, is in no important particular out of harmony with its spirit and purport; and that whatever has been added is substantially of the same character with the primitive stock. To pervert an author's meanings, while still utilizing his name and reputation, would savour of dishonesty; while to reproduce error or suppress truth would indicate a lack of prudence at once dishonourable and unjust.

The authorities drawn upon (indicated below) will be seen to be representative of the best and most scholarly Christian and biblical learning of the age, and at the same time free from any taint of the learned scepticism and the anarchical liberalism of a well known school of rationalistic biblical critics and expositors. It has been the design in every case to evade no difficult passage, to recognise all really obscure points, and to give the chief renderings of them by the best and most trustworthy critics and expositors; and when all these fail to give satisfactory solutions of the cases in hand, to honestly confess that the subject remains unexplained. Cases in point will be found in the matter of "tongues," (1 Cor. xii, 10, xiv, 2, etc.,) and in the reasons rendered for the veiling of women in the public assemblies, "because of the angels," of which, with some others, no expositor has given any satisfactory solution: and this is freely confessed. In other cases, in which it is evident that a false exegesis (which in some things has widely prevailed in past times) has engendered popular misconceptions of the sense of Holy Scripture, it has been thought