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That you would restore him to a communion with you in your church assemblies, and take him into the bosom of your church again, and be (as before) friendly towards him. The word which we translate
confirm; is kurwsai, which signifieth authoritatively to establish or confirm. Some observe, that the apostle speaks to them as judges, to gain their good opinion, and make them more pliable, whereas he might authoritatively have absolved him. It is hard: to say what authority the apostles had, or had not, to excommunicate; but we want a precedent in holy writ of the apostles, or any of them, exercising such a power, as being absent, and so in no capacity to hear the proof of any fact against scandalous persons. Paul {1Co_5:1-13} writes to the church of Corinth to do it, and doth only himself command them to do their duty; and here again he writeth to them to forgive him, and restore him. There being no mention, either in the former Epistle, or here, of any command that the incestuous person should put away his wife taken unlawfully, or that he did any such thing in testification of his repentance, makes it very probable, that his crime was not using his father’s wife as his wife, but as his harlot; had it been otherwise, we should, very probably, have read of something in the one or the other place, signifying such a command of the apostle, or the thing done by him.