{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/103/1030743.htm","path":"chr/ecf/103/1030743.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/103/1030743.htm","text":"11. And he goes on, and adjoins, lest perchance any should imagine that he only therefore received not, because they had not given: \u201cBut I have not written these things that they may be so done unto me: good is it for me rather to die than that any make void my glory.\u201d 2501 What glory, unless that which he wished to have with God, while in Christ suffering with the weak? As he is presently about to say most openly; \u201cFor if I shall have preached the Gospel, there is not to me any glory: for necessity is laid upon me;\u201d 2502 that is, of sustaining this life. \u201cFor woe will be to me,\u201d he saith, \u201cif I preach not the Gospel:\u201d that is, to my own will shall I forbear to preach the Gospel, because I shall be tormented with hunger, and shall not have whereof to live. For he goes on, and says; \u201cFor if willingly I do this, I have a reward.\u201d By his doing it p. 509 willingly, he means, if he do it uncompelled by any necessity of supporting this present life; and for this he hath reward, to wit, with God, of glory everlasting. \u201cBut if unwilling,\u201d saith he, \u201ca dispensation is entrusted unto me:\u201d 2503 that is, if being unwilling, I am by necessity of passing through this present life, compelled to preach the Gospel, \u201ca dispensation is entrusted unto me;\u201d to wit, that by my dispensation as a steward, because Christ, because the truth, is that which I preach, howsoever because of occasion, howsoever seeking mine own, howsoever by necessity of earthly emolument compelled so to do, other men do profit, but I have not that glorious and everlasting reward with God. \u201cWhat then,\u201d saith he, \u201cshall be my reward?\u201d He saith it as asking a question: therefore the pronunciation must be suspended, until he give the answer. Which the more easily to understand, let, as it were, us put the question to him, \u201cWhat, then, will be thy reward, O Apostle, when that earthly reward due to good evangelists, not for its sake evangelizing, but yet taking it as the consequence and offered to them by the Lord\u2019s appointment, thou acceptest not? What shall be thy reward then?\u201d See what he replies: \u201cThat, preaching the Gospel, I may make the Gospel of Christ without charge;\u201d that is, that the Gospel may not be to believers expensive, lest they account that for this end is the Gospel to be preached to them, that its preachers should seem as it were to sell it. And yet he comes back again and again, that he may show what, by warrant of the Lord, he hath a right unto, yet doeth not: \u201cthat I abuse not,\u201d saith he, \u201cmy power in the Gospel.\u201d 2504\n1 Cor. 9.161 Cor. ix. 16. [See R.V.]\n509:2503 509:2504","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. III: Moral Treatises...","type":"page"}