A CRITICAL AND GRAMMATICAL COMMENTARY ON ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. WITH A REVISED TRANSLATION. BY CHARLES J. ELLICOTT, B.D., DEAN OF EXeter, and prOFESSOR OF DIVINITY, KING'S COLLEGE, 57615 E4601 1377 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. THE following pages form the second part of a commentary on St. Paul's Epistles, founded on the same principles and constructed on the same plan as that of the Epistle to the Galatians. As I explained, somewhat at length, in the preface to that Epistle, the general principles, critical, grammatical, and exegetical, upon which this commentary has been attempted, I will now only make a few special observations on this present portion of the work, and record my obligations to those expositors who have more particularly devoted themselves to this Epistle. With regard to the present commentary, I will only remind the reader, that as in style, matter, and logical connection, this sublime Epistle differs considerably from that to the Galatians, so the commentary must necessarily, in many respects, reflect these differences and distinctions. Several points of grammatical interest which particularly characterized the former Epistle are scarcely perceptible in the present; while difficulties which made themselves but slightly felt in the vivid, argumentative, expostulatory language of the Epistle to the Galatians, are here, amidst the earnest hortatory comments, the deeper doctrinal expositions, and the more profound enarrations of the primal counsels of God, ever maintaining a distinct and visible prominence. In the Epistle to the Galatians, for example, the explanation of the uses of the cases did not commonly involve many points of interest: in this Epistle, the cases, especially the genitive, present almost every phase and form of difficulty; the uses are most various, the combinations most subtle and significant. In the Epistle to the Galatians, again, the particles, causal, illative, or adversative, which connected the clauses were constantly claiming the reader's attention, while the subordination or coördination of the clauses themselves and the inter-dependence of the different members and factors of the sentence were generally simple and perspicuous. In the present Epistle these difficulties are exactly reversed; the use of the particles is more simple, while the intertexture of sentences and the connection of clauses, especially in the earlier portions of the Epistle, try the powers and principles of grammatical and logical analysis to the very uttermost. |