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Here the false teachers are evidently inside the Church, corrupting its members; not outside, inducing its members to leave it. For the prophecy continues:
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And many shall follow their lascivious doings; by reason of whom the way of the truth shall be evil spoken of. They could not cause
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if they were complete outsiders, professing to have no connexion with it. In Gal. v. 20
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are among
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against which St. Paul warns his fickle converts, and
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are there coupled with
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and
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In 1 Cor. xi. 19 the Apostle gives as a reason for believing the report that there are divisions in the Church of Corinth the fact that (man's tendency to differ being what it is) divisions are inevitable, and have their use, for in this way those which are approved among Christians are made manifest. It is possible in both these passages to understand St. Paul as meaning the
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as in the passage in 2 Pet., rather than the schools or parties which have adopted the views. But this is not of much moment. The important thing to notice is, that in all three cases the
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have caused or are tending to cause splits inside the Church: they do not indicate hostile positions outside it. This use of the word is analogous to that in the Acts of the Apostles, where it represents the Pharisees and Sadducees, and even the Christian Church itself, as parties or schools inside Judaism, not as revolts against it. We shall be seriously misled, if we allow the later meaning of
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and erroneous doctrine, and the still stronger language used by early Christian writers in commenting on these texts, is the downright wickedness of a good many of the