o each other. Now it is plain,
that to a society in such a state, and to minds so educated, the
gospel of Christ must have presented a peculiar attraction, presenting
itself to them as it did, as a law of Christian liberty. And so, in
Corinth the gospel had "free course and was glorified," and was
received with great joy by almost all men, and by minds of all classes
and all sects; and a large number of these attached themselves to the
teaching of the Apostle Paul as the most accredited expounder of
Christianity--the "royal law of liberty." But it seems, from what we
read in this epistle, that a large number of these men received
Christianity as a thing intellectual, and that alone--and not as a
thing which touched the conscience, and swayed and purified the
affections. Thus this liberty became to them almost _all_--they ran
into sin or went to extravagance--they rejoiced in their freedom from
the superstitions, the ignorances, and the scruples which bound their
weaker brethren; but had no charity--none of that intense charity
which characterized the Apostle Paul, for those still struggling in
the delusions and darkness from which they themselves were free.

More than that, they demanded their right, their Christian liberty of
expressing their opinions in the church, merely for the sake of
_exhibiting_ the Christian graces and spiritual gifts which had been
showered upon them so largely; until by degrees those very assemblies
became a lamentable exhibition of their own depravity, and led to
numerous irregularities which we find severely rebuked by the Apostle
Paul. Their women, rejoicing in the emancipation which had been given
to the Christian community, laid aside the old habits of attire which
had been consecrated so long by Grecian and Jewish custom, and
appeared with their heads uncovered in the Christian community. Still
further than that, the Lord's Supper exhibited an absence of all
solemnity, and seemed more a meeting for licentious gratification,
where "one was hungry, and another was drunken"--a place in which
earthly drunkenness, the mere enjoyment of the appetites, had taken
the place of Christian charity towards each other.

And the same feeling--this love of mere liberty--liberty in
itself--manifested itself in many other directions. Holding by this
freedom, their philosophy taught that the body, that is the flesh, was
the only cause of sin; that the soul was holy and