Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
First, he shows love, sincerity, and confidence toward the Corinthians.
Second, joy over their repentance and amendment, verse 6.
Third, in verse 10, he gives the signs and acts of the true penitence of the Corinthians.
Fourth, in verse 13, he cites Titus as a witness of this penitence, love, and obedience of the Corinthians.
Vulgate Text: 2 Corinthians 7:1-16
1. Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of the flesh and of the spirit, perfecting sanctification in the fear of God. 2. Receive us. We have injured no man, we have corrupted no man, we have over-reached no man. 3. I speak not this to your condemnation, for I have said before, that you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together. 4. Great is my confidence with you, great is my glorying for you. I am filled with comfort: I exceedingly abound with joy in all our tribulation. 5. For also when we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we suffered all tribulation: combats without, fears within. 6. But God, who comforts the humble, comforted us by the coming of Titus. 7. And not by his coming only, but also by the consolation wherewith he was comforted in you, relating to us your desire, your weeping, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced the more. 8. For although I made you sorrowful by my epistle, I do not repent; and if I did repent, seeing that the same epistle (although but for a time) did make you sorrowful, 9. now I am glad: not because you were made sorrowful, but because you were made sorrowful unto penance. For you were made sorrowful according to God, that you might suffer damage by us in nothing. 10. For the sorrow that is according to God works penance, steadfast unto salvation: but the sorrow of the world works death. 11. For behold this very thing, that you were made sorrowful according to God, how great solicitude it works in you; yea, defense, yea indignation, yea fear, yea desire, yea zeal, yea revenge: in all things you have shown yourselves to be undefiled in the matter. 12. Wherefore, although I wrote to you, it was not for his sake that did the wrong, nor for him that suffered it: but to manifest our solicitude that we have for you 13. before God: therefore we were comforted. But in our consolation, we did the more abundantly rejoice for the joy of Titus, because his spirit was refreshed by you all. 14. And if I have boasted any thing to him of you, I have not been put to shame; but as we have spoken all things to you in truth, so also our boasting that was made to Titus is found a truth. 15. And his bowels are more abundantly toward you; remembering the obedience of you all, how with fear and trembling you have received him. 16. I rejoice that in all things I have confidence in you.
Verse 1: Having Therefore These Promises, Let Us Cleanse Ourselves
1. Having therefore these promises, — namely that Christians shall be temples of God, and His sons and daughters, and shall have God dwelling and walking within them, as has preceded.
Let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and of spirit. — Hence Theologians take their division of sin: into carnal, which deals with a carnal object, and makes a man like a beast, such as gluttony, lust, drunkenness; and spiritual, which deals with a spiritual object, and makes a man like a demon, as is anger, pride, envy. Second, fittingly St. Basil, Rule 54 of the shorter ones: "The defilement," he says, "of the flesh is to do carnal things: the defilement of the spirit is to mix oneself with those who do such things, to associate with them and to share with them"; as these Corinthians were exchanging conversations, and communicating with the fornicator, whom the Apostle wished to be wholly avoided.
Perfecting sanctification, — from procheim, sanctimony, so that the mind purged from every defilement of flesh and spirit may be perfectly holy and pure, and devoted to holy works in the fear of God: because the fear of God is the beginning and the perfection of true wisdom and holiness, Sirach 1:16 and 19:18; and as much as the fear of God grows, so much does sanctity grow, and accordingly perfect fear of God is perfect sanctity. Splendidly St. Basil, Rule 53 already cited: "Sanctification," he says, "is to cleave continually and wholly devoted to God, carefully seeking out and zealously holding those things which are pleasing to Him. Since even in those things which are offered as gifts to God, those which are cut short or maimed are rejected as least pleasing; or to withdraw to common human use that which has once been dedicated as a gift to God is nefarious and wicked."
Verse 2: Receive Us. We Have Injured No Man
Receive us. — In Greek χωρήσατε, that is, embrace us with the wide heart of charity, just as I in turn embrace you with my whole soul. So Theophylact; see ch. VI, verses 11, 12, and 13. Properly χωρήσατε ἡμᾶς signifies place us, make a place for us, namely that I may find a place with you, not narrow, but ample, that I may be received in the wide bosom of your charity: which Our translator rendered, receive us; Maldonatus in his manuscript Notes renders, bear with us calmly, if I shall say something rather complimentary about myself.
We have over-reached no man. — οὐδένα ἐπλεονεκτήσαμεν, we have extorted no man's property, nor have we seized it by force or fraud. See what was said on ch. II, verse 11.
Verse 3: You Are in Our Hearts, to Die Together and to Live Together
3. I speak not this to your condemnation, — as though I were condemning, blaming, and reproving you for suspecting such things of me, namely that I have injured or over-reached anyone. So St. Anselm.
You are in our hearts, to die together and to live together. — q. d. I love you so much, that I am ready both to die with you and for you, and to live with you and for you. How this coheres with the preceding will become clear at verse 4. He alludes to most closely loving friends and lovers, for whom, as life was held in common and all things in life were common, so death too was common, so that when one fell, the other would fall too: such were Nisus and Euryalus in Virgil, Aeneid IX, where, with Euryalus captured, Nisus cries out:
Me, me — here I am, I did it — turn your steel against me, O Rutulians; mine is the whole guilt, he neither dared nor could do anything..... Then, pierced through, he flung himself upon his lifeless friend, and there at last rested in a peaceful death.
Such also in wars were those whom the Gauls call Soldurii, whom Caesar interprets as devotees, in book III of the Gallic War. Such too among the Thebans was the ἱερὸς λόχος, the Sacred Band, of which Plutarch mentions in Pelopidas. Erasmus and others add that the Apostle alludes to that sort of ancient friendship, by which, when one friend happened to die, the other would voluntarily take his own life: which Caesar relates the Soldurii also did; the kind of friendship which Horace signifies he had with Maecenas. Whence they were called συναποθνήσκοντες, dying together, as Paul has it here too. So even now in Peru and Mexico, the dearer wives and servants, when the husband or master has died, throw themselves alive into the pyre or sepulcher with the master's corpse. And among the Japanese, nobles condemned to death, by cutting open their belly with their intimates, take their own death. Whose self-killing the Apostle condemns, but their friendship he praises and embraces, q. d. Just as they love one another even unto death, so I too love you, O Corinthians, unto death, and I desire to live with you, to die with you, but not as they did, to take death upon myself. But it is not necessary to extend the Apostle's words and love so far, especially to illicit and parricidal friendships; for the friendship of these consisted chiefly in simultaneous death and self-killing, and accordingly cannot be separated from parricide: it was therefore wicked, not to be praised, but to be condemned.
Verse 4: Great Is My Confidence With You
4. Great is my confidence with you. — In Greek παρρησία, that is freedom, confidence, which arises from love, q. d. Most freely do I pour myself out before you, admonish, rebuke; because I love you intimately, as I have already said. Hence I glory for you, that is, of you so devoted and obedient to me. So Theophylact and Ambrose. All these things Paul says to remove from the Corinthians the suspicion of distrust, lest namely from distrust he should seem to have said: "We have injured no man," etc., q. d. I did not say this as though distrusting your good opinion of me, but from a certain liberty and confidence of soul, which my great love of you begets. Hence I am wont to glory of you. Let Superiors learn here from St. Paul to take care lest their subjects distrust them, thinking that the Superior does not believe them or trust them, or not daring to commit themselves and their affairs to the Superior, as though less favorable to them; let them rather take care that the subjects deal with them confidently, and know that they are loved; let them show that those subjects are a care and concern to them, and that they have a good opinion of them and of their virtue: thus they will bind their hearts to themselves, and turn them whithersoever they will.
I exceedingly abound with joy in all tribulation. — Because, namely, you have corrected those things which I condemned in the previous epistle, you have filled me with such consolation, that I not only abound in it, but exceedingly abound; in Greek it is ὑπερπερισσεύομαι, that is I overflow exceedingly, and this exuberance of joy extinguishes every sense of afflictions, just as an abundance of waters extinguishes a small fire. So Theophylact.
Note, friendship in the souls of friends begets four affections. The first affection is of confidence, of which Paul here says: "Great is my confidence with you." The second is of boasting, of which he adds: "Great is my glorying for you." The third is of consolation, of which he subjoins: "I am filled with comfort." The fourth is of overflowing joy, of which follows: "I exceedingly abound with joy in all tribulation."
Verse 5: Combats Without, Fears Within
5. Combats without, — there was open enmity to me from unbelievers.
Fears within, — in my soul I had anxieties and solicitudes both on account of false brethren, and for the weak Christians, lest on account of so many of my own and their persecutions they should be drawn away from the faith. So Anselm and Ambrose.
Verse 7: Relating to Us Your Desire, Your Weeping, Your Zeal for Me
7. (Titus received consolation) in you. — Τὸ consolatus is taken here passively: for the Greek παρεκλήθη is passive.
Relating to us your desire (of amendment), your weeping (penitent for sins), so that I rejoiced the more (than I had previously been saddened over your schisms and sins, seeing and hearing such a great) zeal of yours for me, — by which namely you are zealous to defend and uphold me and my honor and apostolate against detractors.
Verse 8: I Made You Sorrowful by My Epistle
8. I made you sorrowful in (the previous) epistle (rebuking your vices), seeing that the epistle (although but for a time) made you sorrowful. — There is an ellipsis; for one must supply: Yet it profited you, and moved you to do penance, which secured for you peace of conscience and joy.
Although but for a time, — although for a short time, q. d. My epistle made you sorrowful for only a short time and stirred you to penance. Whence I rejoice both over my epistle and over your penance.
Verse 9: You Were Made Sorrowful Unto Penance
9. You were made sorrowful unto penance, — this sorrow led you to penance, to weeping, verse 7, to indignation and revenge, verse 11; therefore penance is not bare repentance, as I will presently show at greater length.
Verse 10: For the Sorrow That Is According to God
Verse 10. 10. For the sorrow that is according to God. — Note: The Apostle here sets out and distinguishes a twofold sorrow, one "according to God," the second of the world. The sorrow of the world, or carnal, is that which is born from excessive love and loss of worldly goods, as on account of riches and pleasures lost, friends or powerful persons offended. This often works death of the soul, because it incites one to recover these goods by offending God. Not rarely it also works diseases and death of the body: for many, while they grieve too much for their own things or their own people, are oppressed by grief, waste away and die. "Sorrow," says Sirach 30:25, "has slain many, and there is no profit in it."
Sorrow "according to God," or divine, is that which is conceived on account of God offended (says St. Basil in Brief Rules, questions 192 and 194); this is contrition, and begets "penance," that is self-castigation, "unto steadfast salvation," that is salutary, firm, solid, in Greek ἀμεταμέλητον, not to be repented of, and, as Augustine says, not to be repented of. Whence Chrysostom and Erasmus rightly refer "steadfast" to penance, not to salvation.
Note second: The Apostle distinguishes this sorrow from penance, as a cause from an effect: for sorrow, that is contrition, brings about penance, that is, self-castigation.
Hence it is clear that this sorrow and penance is not a bare repentance and new life, as the heretics will have it; nor, as Erasmus says, a bare retractation of past sins; but is contrition and self-castigation.
It is clear, second, that sinners are justified and obtain salvation not by faith alone, but also by penance.
It is clear, third, that this penance includes contrition, acknowledgment of sin or confession, and satisfaction: and these are the three parts of penance. Whence at verse 11, the Apostle, explaining penance: "It works," he says, "solicitude," namely of being reconciled and making satisfaction to God, "revenge," etc., of which at verse 11.
Wherefore the golden sentence of D. Chrysostom must be noted, hom. 5 to the People on the use, end, and fruit of sorrow: "Sorrow," he says, "was given to us for this, not that by it we should obliterate ourselves in death or in some other thing, but that we may blot out sin, as a remedy for that disease; therefore as a remedy for sore eyes removes that, not other diseases: so sorrow removes sin, not other ailments: for example, someone has been fined of money, he grieved, he did not amend it; he lost a son, he grieved, he did not raise the dead; he was insulted, he grieved, he did not recall the insult; he is sick, he grieves but does not remove the disease, rather increases it: but someone has sinned, has been saddened, he has blotted out his sins: for the sorrow which is according to God works penance unto steadfast salvation; therefore sorrow has been made solely on account of sin, from which it was born, and therefore as a moth it gnaws and consumes it."
That you might suffer damage by us in nothing. — For the teacher, says Theophylact, then inflicts harm on the disciple, when he does not rebuke the offender: but he brings gain, if he reproves and corrects the same one.
Verse 10. 10. For the sorrow that is according to God. — He distinguishes, as I have said, "sorrow according to God" from worldly sorrow. The former, from St. Chrysostom his master, Cassian thus describes, bk. IX, ch. X, when he says: "Sorrow is to be judged useful to us in one thing only, when we conceive it either inflamed with repentance for our offenses (of this the Apostle properly treats here), or with desire for perfection, or by contemplation of future blessedness." Then in ch. XI, he describes its marks, signs, and effects thus: "This," he says, "sorrow which works penance unto steadfast salvation, is obedient, affable, humble, gentle, sweet and patient, since it descends from the charity of God, and untiringly stretches itself out to every pain of body and contrition of spirit by desire of perfection, and is in a certain manner cheerful, and animated by the hope of its own progress, retains all the sweetness of affability and long-suffering, having in itself all the fruits of the Holy Spirit, which the same Apostle enumerates: Now the fruit of the Spirit is charity, joy, peace, longsuffering, goodness, kindness, faith, gentleness, continence." But of worldly sorrow he gives these emblems: "It is most harsh, impatient, hard, full of rancor and unfruitful grief, and penal despair; breaking and recalling him whom it has embraced from diligence and salutary sorrow, as being irrational, and intercepting not only the efficacy of prayers, but also emptying out all the spiritual fruits we have mentioned, which the former (sorrow) is wont to confer."
Verse 11: How Great Solicitude It Works in You
11. For behold this very thing, that you were made sorrowful according to God, how great solicitude it works in you; yea, defense, yea indignation, yea fear, yea desire, yea zeal, yea revenge. — Here he sets out, on Calvin's testimony, seven effects of sorrow according to God and of true penance, namely that it works first, "solicitude" to expiate the offense and to return into grace with God. Second, "yea, defense." Now "sed" (yea/but) is the same as "sed et" (yea and), as Anselm reads, that is, "indeed," q. d. Penance works in you "solicitude," indeed also defense, namely that you should defend me against the pseudo-apostles and detractors. For "defense" the Greek has ἀπολογίαν, which Ambrose renders "excuse"; Erasmus, "satisfaction"; Maldonatus, "refutation of the imputed crime," which, he says, is done not by words, but by deeds, namely by living well. Third, "yea," that is indeed and, "indignation," so that, now recognizing your schisms, the toleration of incest and other sins, which I rebuked in the first epistle, sorrowing and repentant you may be indignant with yourselves, and rebuke yourselves, saying: What have I done? whom have I offended? to what have I fallen? where was my mind, where my senses? was I mad? Fourth, "yea," that is indeed, "fear," that you may henceforth fear not so much to offend me, as to offend God. Fifth, "yea," that is indeed, "desire," that you may desire to correct yourselves, and to make satisfaction to me and rather to God. Sixth, "yea," that is indeed, "zeal," that is the zeal of God, that, being zealous for the honor of God, you may cast out from the Church that incestuous man, says Anselm and Chrysostom. Seventh, "yea," that is indeed, "revenge," that you may avenge your sloth and sins, both by sorrow and tears, as he said in verse 7, by afflicting yourselves, and by other ways by mortifying and punishing your bodies and souls. So Theodoret, Theophylact, Ambrose, St. Thomas, indeed even Calvin, bk. III of the Institutes, ch. XIII, §16: "The last," he says, "is revenge; for the more severe we are upon ourselves, and the sharper the scrutiny by which we examine ourselves about our sins, the more we ought to hope for the Lord more propitious and merciful. And certainly it cannot but be that a soul stricken with the horror of the divine judgment should take up the part of avenger in exacting punishment from itself."
Note: In these seven effects and fruits of penance there is a gradation. For the Apostle ascends gradually from the lesser to the greater, and the little word "sed" (yea) indicates this, which is put for "indeed," q. d. This sorrow over God offended induced not only solicitude for reconciliation, but also defense of Paul; indeed indignation against sin; indeed beyond a holy fear of guarding against sin from then on; nay rather, desire of satisfaction; indeed indeed zeal and fervor against sinners; and so finally revenge and chastisement of sins, which is the highest degree and fruit of penance.
This passage therefore openly teaches that penance is not a bare change of life and a resolve of a new life, but also detestation of the old, castigation, satisfaction. Whence the Council of Trent, session XIV, ch. VIII, from the ancient usage of the Church commands that confessors in fixing the satisfaction look not only to the safeguarding of the new life, but also to the avenging of the sin committed, even though it has been remitted as to guilt by absolution.
The same most clearly teaches the most ancient Tertullian, in book On Penance, IX: "Exomologesis," he says, "is the discipline of prostrating and humbling a man, enjoining a way of life that draws down mercy: even concerning his very habit and food, it commands him to lie on sackcloth and ashes, to darken the body with squalor, to cast down the mind with grief; to change those things in which he has sinned by sad treatment, to know food and drink only of the pure, not for the belly, but for the soul; to nourish prayers with fasts, to groan, to weep and to bellow day and night to the Lord; to fall down before the presbyters, and to kneel to the dear ones of God, to enjoin upon all the brethren the embassies of his supplication."
So also Climacus, On Penance, step 5: "Penance," he says, "is a self-condemning thought, is a perpetual repudiation of bodily consolation, is a voluntary toleration of all things that afflict, is to oneself an ever-active artificer of torments, is a vigorous affliction of the belly, and a continual rebuke of the soul in the firmest sense, is the abyss of humility."
Hence the learned think that penance is so called as it were the holding of pain (paenae tenentia). Whence Ausonius, bringing in Metanoea, that is Penance, speaking, says thus:
I am the goddess who exact penalties for what is done and what is not done, That you may repent — so I am called Metanoea.
Note how these things are repugnant to the soft genius of Luther and Calvin, who for all sins, however many and enormous, enjoin no other penance than faith. Believe, they say, that God has remitted your sins for you through the merits of Christ, and by this very thing He will remit to you all guilt and penalty. To wit, believe that you are in the Elysian fields, believe that you are a king, and by this very thing you shall be; certainly, if not in reality, at least by your imagination and fantasy. So indeed lovers also fashion dreams for themselves. Let him believe so who needs not so much faith, as a brain and hellebore, and who, with his own evil and peril, desires and intends to enter not the narrow way of the few which leads to life, but the broad and spacious way of the many which leads to perdition. Truly, as the Sibyl sings in Virgil:
Easy is the descent to Avernus: But to recall one's step, and to escape forth to the upper airs, This is the toil, this is the labor; few, whom kindly Jupiter has loved, or whose burning virtue has borne up to the ether, those born of gods, have been able.
Let the Novatians hear Jerome, or the author of the epistle (whoever he is, certainly serious and ancient — indeed Erasmus and Marianus from the style suspect him to be St. Augustine) to Susanna who had fallen, prescribing for her and for any penitent of antiquity, of lamentation and penance: "Who shall console you, virgin daughter of Sion, for great as the sea has your contrition become? Pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord, lift up to Him your hands for the remedy of your sins. Accept therefore lamentation, and first indeed let no day pass without the fiftieth psalm, which is sung in such a matter; which up to that little verse, 'A contrite and humbled heart God will not despise,' run through with groaning and tears (Note: by a penitent daily the Miserere psalm should be recited with groaning and tears). Moreover, pour out this lamentation, not without compunction of heart, in the sight of God the Judge: Who will give water to my head, and to my eyes a fountain of tears, that I may bewail the wounds of my soul? Alas for me, for I have become as Sodom, and burned as Gomorrah! Who will have mercy on my ashes? I have offended more grievously than Sodom, because she sinned not knowing the law, but I, having received grace, have sinned. If a man sin against a man, there will be one who intervenes; I have sinned against the Lord, what propitiator shall I find? O how bitter is the fruit of lust, more bitter than gall, more cruel than a sword! How have I become a desolation? suddenly I have failed, I have perished on account of my iniquity, as a dream of those who arise. Therefore in the city of the Lord my image is made vile, my name is blotted out of the book. Woe to that day, in which an unhappy womb begot me, and this cruel light received me! It would have been better for me not to have been born, than thus to be a fable among the nations. On account of me confusion and reproach has been made for the servants of the Lord, and for those who worship Him worthily. Mourn me, mountains and rivers, for I am a daughter of weeping. My sin and my iniquity are not like the offenses of men, because this impiety is horrible, to defile with flesh a virgin and one professed in chastity. I have lied unto the Lord most high; nevertheless I will cry out to the Lord: Lord, rebuke me not in Thy fury, nor chastise me in Thy wrath. For Thy arrows," etc. Ambrose prescribes similar things for a fallen virgin; Cyprian, sermon On the Lapsed; Chrysostom, hom. 41 to the People.
But of the examples and customs of penitents Climacus, in the cited place, recounting these things has what may rightly stir up sharp goads of compunction in any sinner. "When I had come," he says, "to the monastery of the penitents — indeed rather to that of those fleeing to Religion — I saw truly things and words that could do violence to God: I saw some of those guilty ones standing throughout whole nights even until daybreak watchful, and keeping their feet motionless, doing violence to nature against sleep, indulging themselves no rest, but rebuking themselves; others in prayer in the manner of the accused, with hands bound behind their backs, bowing their pale faces to the ground, crying out that they were unworthy to look at heaven, asking nothing, but offering to God a silent and mute mind full of confusion. Some sitting on the pavement strewn with hair-cloth and ashes, covering the face with the knees, and dashing the forehead against the ground. Others ceaselessly beating their breasts, and recalling their soul and life with mighty sighing; others weeping, others lamenting that they could not do so. I saw some, as it were brazen, made out of grief, and insensible to all things. Others with fixed gazes upon the ground continually moving their head, and uttering the roar of lions." And a little after, when he had related many of their truly admirable words and deeds, he adds that he saw in them "burning tongues like dogs proceeding from their mouth. Of these some tortured themselves under the most burning heat of the sun, others afflicted themselves with the most bitter cold; some, tasting a little water, lest they should be utterly parched with thirst, so rested; some, when they had received a small piece of bread, threw away the rest as being unworthy of it. What place did laughter have among them? what idle talk? what wrath? what fury? where was a thought of light wine, where the tasting of fruits? Continually they cried to the Lord, and only the voice of prayer was heard." Who desires more, will read in the same author rare and marvelous things even unto astonishment. He concludes there: "I saw, and considered them happier who after a fall so mourn, than those who have never fallen, and do not so weep over themselves."
Hear finally the penance and lament of that noble St. Paula for small offenses, in Jerome's Epitaph of her: "Soft beds, even in the gravest fever, she did not have, but on the hardest ground with hair-cloth strewn, she rested; if indeed that is to be called rest, which she joined day and night with continual prayers, fulfilling that of the Psalmist: I will wash my bed every night, with my tears I will water my couch. In her you would believe were fountains of tears, so did she bewail light sins, that you would believe her guilty of the gravest crimes. And when she was repeatedly admonished by us to spare her eyes, and to preserve them for the Gospel reading, she would say: That face must be made foul which against God's precept I have often painted with purple, white-lead and antimony. That body must be afflicted which has been given over to many delights. A long laugh must be compensated by perpetual weeping. Soft and most precious silken garments must be exchanged for the harshness of hair-cloth. I, who pleased my husband and the world, now desire to please Christ."
These things a little more fully in favor both of the Novatians, where note that He says, ex consolatione vestri (from the consolation of you), that is, because you, being penitents and having been bathed in the tears of consolation in your repentance, and being fervid in spirit, as I said in verse 11, I heard. "The tears of penitents are the wine of angels," says St. Bernard; nay rather they are the wine of penitents too: for nothing so gladdens the soul as compunction. O how sweet for the penitent, with Magdalene at the feet of Jesus, to weep, to bathe them with tears, to wipe and to kiss them, and there to hear: "Your sins are forgiven you!" No one knows this except by experience. His spirit was refreshed — he was renewed by your correction, weeping, and zeal, as I said in verse 7.
In all things you have shown yourselves to be undefiled in the matter. — The Syriac: You have shown that you are pure in that matter, that is, alien and immune from the sin of the fornicator: for although you were initially negligent in punishing it, now however you have shown your displeasure with it by avenging and repenting of it. So Anselm and Theophylact.
Verse 12: I Wrote to You, Not for His Sake That Did the Wrong
12. I have written to you, not on account of him who did the wrong (not on account of the fornicator), nor on account of him who suffered it — ἀδικηθέντος, that is, the one who was wronged, namely the father whose wife — that is, his stepmother — that incestuous man abused. Hence it appears that his father was still living, as if to say: When in the prior epistle I wrote rather sharply, I did not wish to prosecute the particular wrongs of the incestuous man or of his parent; but to show the solicitude which I bear for the common safety of your Church, namely so that I might drive away from it this common scandal and public infamy.
Verse 13: Therefore We Were Comforted
13. Therefore we were consoled — on account of your repentance, zeal, emulation, etc., as I said in verses 6, 7, 9, 11. The Greek copies now mostly (I say mostly, for some have it as Our [Vulgate], as Beza himself testifies) divide these words otherwise, and have it thus: Διὰ τοῦτο παρακεκλήμεθα ἐπὶ τῇ παρακλήσει ὑμῶν, περισσοτέρως μᾶλλον ἐχάρημεν ἐπὶ τῇ χαρᾷ Τίτου, ὅτι ἀναπέπαυται τὸ πνεῦμα αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ πάντων ὑμῶν, that is, therefore we have received consolation from your consolation; nay rather we rejoiced more abundantly over the joy of Titus, because his spirit was refreshed by you all.
Verse 14: Our Boasting That Was Made to Titus Is Found a Truth
14. Our boasting, which was to Titus, was made true — it became clear to Titus that our boasting was true, by which I am accustomed to boast to him about you as such well-disposed and good disciples.
Verse 15: His Bowels Are More Abundantly Toward You
15. His bowels are more abundantly toward you — his heart and bowels now incline toward you more than before; Titus now loves you more than before.
Verse 16: I Rejoice That in All Things I Have Confidence in You
16. I have confidence in you. — Greek θαρρῶ, as if to say: I dare and freely speak and act with you, whether by praising or by accusing; for you always obey me, so that consequently I dare also to think the best of you and to boast of you securely. So Chrysostom, Theophylact, Ambrose. Anselm notes Paul's prudence as that of a physician, who treats now nearly healed wounds with the gentlest medicines of consolation and praise, so that the burning of the prior reproof may be healed.