Matthew Poole and continuators on 2 Corinthians 1:24

24 Not for that we have dominion over your faith , but are helpers of your joy ▪ for by faith ye stand .

Not (say some) that we pretend or boast of any dominion over you, because of your Faith, as if upon that account we would be chargeable, and exact monies of you: But their Interpretation is better, who think that by these words the Apostle removes from himself, and much more from all inferiour Ministers, any power of imposing upon people to believe any thing, but what God had in his Word revealed as the object of Faith. He had in the verse before used the Phrase spare you, which he thought might sound harsh in their ears, and give some occasion to carp at him, as if he designed some Lordly power over them: No, (saith the Apostle) though I speak of sparing you, I intend no exercise of Lordly power,

but only to promote your joy, by removing those things which hinder your true rejoycing. Your present glorying is not good, while these disorders, contrary to the Will of God, are amongst you; and you are full of contentions and divisions, which hinder your comfortable society and communion together, as one Body.

The most of you stand in the Faith, (so some interpret the latter part of the verse.) I should rather make this the sense, By Faith you must stand; if you err in matters of Faith, (as some of this Church had done in the business of the Resurrection, as the Apostle told us in the 15. Chapter of the first Epistle) you fall; you no longer stand, than you keep the Faith pure and incorrupt. For, because of their Errors, as to the Resurrection, I cannot tell how to make the Apostles sense to be what some Learned men make it to bear, That he had nothing to blame in them in matters of Faith, but only in some things referring to Order; and therefore [illegible: 1 letter]hey need not to suspect his exercise of any dominion over their Faith.

Marginal references: 1 Cor. 3.5. [illegible: 1 word]. 5.3.; [illegible: 1 word] 11.20.