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Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife? Those that by those terms, adelfhn, gunaika, understand, not (as we translate it) a sister, a wife, but a woman, that should out of her estate have contributed to the apostle’s maintenance, (as Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, followed Christ, and ministered to him of their substance, Luk_8:3), seem not to consider:
1. That such women would have been no burden, but a help to the church (which is quite contrary to the apostle’s sense).
2. That the term lead about, imports a conjugal relation to the woman.
3. That if this had been the sense, it had been enough to have said, to lead about a woman; he should not need have said, a sister, a woman.
4. That such leading about a woman, not their wife, had been scandalous.
5. That the very phrase, a sister, a wife, answers the phrase, Act_23:1, Men, brethren, which signifies no more than, O ye Christian men; as a sister, a wife, signifies here a Christian wife.
6. That we no where read, that Peter, James, John, Judas, (here called the brethren of the Lord), or any of the other apostles, ever in their travels carried about with them any such rich matrons, not their wives, who (as those, Luk_8:3) ministered to them of their substance. Our interpreters have therefore justly translated it, a sister, a wife; and the sense is: Have I not power to marry? Yet the phrase teaches us two things:
a) That Christians have no power, that is, no lawful power, to marry such as are no Christians, their wives must be their sisters also in Christ.
b) That husbands and wives ought to be undivided companions one to another.
As well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas: he instanceth in several apostles that were married, Peter, (called Cephas), James, John, and Judas the son of Alpheus, Christ’s kinsmen. Whence we may observe, that ministers may lawfully marry, no law of God hath restrained them more than others. The popish doctrine forbidding to marry, is by the apostle determined to be a doctrine of devils, 1Ti_4:1,3.