Verse 19
19. These… separate themselves First demoralizing and disgracing the Church by bringing the imputation of their own vices upon it, and then distracting and dividing it by a secession, which, however, relieves it. The same sort of seceders as in 1 John 2:18-19.
Sensual Same word as is rendered “natural” in 1 Corinthians 15:44, and for which we coined the word soulical, as an exact equivalent. The word is plainly antithetical to spirit, as part of the trinality or three-foldness of the human constitution.
Having not the Spirit These men are merely soulical: spirit having not. They had body and animal soul, but they had lost their highest nature, spirit. This does not literally mean that a part of their human constitution had been annihilated, but nullified; reduced to nullity; just as we severely say that a man is conscienceless when his conscience seems dead.
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