CHAPTER 2
1. But I had determined. Whoever it was that divided the chapters, made here a foolish division. For now at length the Apostle explains, in what manner he had spared them. "I had determined," says he, "not to come to you any more in sorrow," or in other words, to occasion you sorrow by my coming. For he had come once by an Epistle, by means of which he had severely pained them. Hence, so long as they had not repented, he was unwilling to come to them, lest he should be constrained to grieve them again, when present with them, for he chose rather to give them longer time for repentance. 1 The word e]krina (I determined) must be rendered in the pluperfect tense, 2 for, when assigning a reason for the delay that had occurred, he explains what had been his intention previously.
2. For if I make you sorry. Here we have the proof of the foregoing statement. No one willingly occasions sorrow to himself. Now Paul says, that he has such a fellow-feeling with the Corinthians, 3 that he cannot feel joyful, unless he sees them happy. Nay more, he declares that they were the source and the authors of his joy -- which they could not be, if they were themselves sorrowful. If this disposition prevail in pastors, it will be the best restraint, to keep them back from alarming with terrors those minds, which they ought rather to have encouraged by means of a cheerful affability. For from this arises an excessively morose harshness 4 -- so that we do not rejoice in the welfare of the Church, as were becoming.