Fragments on the First and Second Epistles to the Corinthians

1In these verses Paul wants to instruct them in what is fitting by setting the ancients beside them, showing that those people too were deemed worthy of the same things as in a type. For since the example appeared so suitable, he was found to be right in advising them not to commit similar offenses, so that they would not suffer similar things. Their being under the cloud, then, was a clear sign of the grace of the Spirit. For just as the cloud overshadowed those people and delivered them from harm by the Egyptians, so grace rescues us from demonic evil.

2Their passage through the sea resembles our own situation in this respect: what the crossing through the sea provided for them—freeing them completely from their enemies and granting them secure freedom for the future—baptism has become for us against our enemies.

3The phrase “they were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Corinthians 10:2) means this: just as those people, having obtained these things, promised to live by the Mosaic laws, so we too, receiving the Spirit of adoption in baptism, make covenants and confessions to live from then on according to Christ’s commandments.

The workings, clearly, of the powers (1 Corinthians 12:28).

Now when he says “faith,” he does not mean the faith of believers, the common and universal faith, but the spiritual gift of faith. For there was a kind of spiritual gift called by the same name as faith, which was supplied to many among the pious of that time for the manifestation of spiritual participation.

4About this the Lord also says in the Gospels: “If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen” (Matthew 17:20). For he was certainly not discussing the common faith with them as if they were unbelievers.

Fragment on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians

This must be read with reproachful hypocrisy: you take your examination not from works—that is, from the truth—but simply from what appears on the surface (2 Corinthians 10:7).