[d] exhorting] For the use of προτρίψασθαι for putting forward, encouraging, see Wisd. xiv. 18. [e] grace] What χάρις here signifies may best be collected from ch. xi. 23, and xiii. 43. In many other places it signifies the gospel of Christ, (see note [d] on Heb. xiii.) as when it is opposed to νόμος, the law, John i. 17. The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. So the σωτήριος χάρις, the salvific grace of God, Titus ii. 11. But in those and many the like places, grace signifies the matter or subject of the gospel, not the preaching of it, for that is expressed by the coming or appearing of that grace. But in that place of ch. xi. 23, where it is said, that seeing the grace of Christ he rejoiced, (that is, seeing that the gospel had been preached with so good success among them,) it signifies the preaching or promulgating of the gospel, (just as εὐαγγέλιον, gospel, doth Rom. i. 1, and ix. 16.) and so ch. xiii. 43, when they exhort them to continue in the grace of God, that was the work of confirmation following that of preaching the gospel to them. And that notion of it seems to be the most adequate and proper for this place, so that πεπιστευκότες διὰ τῆς χάριτος shall signify those that had been formerly converted to the faith by the preaching of the gospel by St. Paul, according to that of Paul planteth and Apollos watereth: for that watering, being the instructing them further who already had received the faith, the edifying, or superstructing on the foundation, is all one with πολύ συνεβάλετο, he conferred much, or contributed his assistance, (or, as perhaps it should be read, συνελάβετο, assisted,) helped to improve them that before believed. As for that of applying διὰ τῆς χάριτος, by grace, to συνεβάλετο, he conferred, that Apollos by grace, that is, his gift and power in scripture contributed much to the believers, there is no necessity of flying to that refuge, nor probability from the placing of those words (which follow, and go not before πεπιστευκόσι) to favour that rendering. In the same sense we find ἐν χάριτι Χριστοῦ, in, or to, or through, the grace, that is, the gospel, of Christ, Gal. i. 6, to, or by which Paul is said to have called them, and is there set opposite to ἄλλο εὐαγγέλιον, another gospel, a doctrine of some false teachers crept in among them. And when he mentioned that of rising from the dead, some of those learned men, the Epicureans especially, which denied all future life, fell a scoffing, and others said—