6 

6:20 Glorify God with your body, and your spirit - Yield your bodies and all their members, as well as your souls and all their faculties, as instruments of righteousness to God.Devote and employ all ye have, and all ye are, entirely, unreservedly, and for ever, to his glory.

7 

7:1 It is good for a man - Who is master of himself. Not to touch a women - That is, not to marry. So great and many are the advantages of a single life.

7:2 Yet, when it is needful, in order to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife. His own - For Christianity allows no polygamy.

7:3 Let not married persons fancy that there is any perfection in living with each other, as if they were unmarried. The debt - This ancient reading seems far more natural than the common one.

7:4 The wife - the husband - Let no one forget this, on pretence of greater purity.

7:5 Unless it be by consent for a time - That on those special and solemn occasions ye may entirely give yourselves up to the exercises of devotion. Lest - If ye should long remain separate. Satan tempt you - To unclean thoughts, if not actions too.

7:6 But I say this - Concerning your separating for a time and coming together again. Perhaps he refers also to Co1 7:2.

7:7 For I would that all men were herein even as I - I would that all believers who are now unmarried would remain "eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake" St. Paul, havingtasted the sweetness of this liberty, wished others to enjoy it, as well as himself. But every one hath his proper gift from God - According to our Lord's declaration, "All men cannot receive this saying, save they," the happy few, to whom it is given," Mat 19:11.

7:8 It is good for them if they remain even as I - That St. Paul was then single is certain and from Act 7:58, compared with the following parts of the history, it seems probable that he always was so. It does not appear that this declaration, any more than Co1 7:1, hath any reference at all to a state of persecution.

7:10 Not I - Only. But the Lord - Christ; by his express command, Mat 5:32.

7:11 But if she depart - Contrary to this express prohibition. And let not the husband put away his wife - Except for the cause of adultery.

7:12 To the rest - Who are married to unbelievers. Speak I - By revelation from God, though our Lord hath not left any commandment concerning it. Let him not put her away - The Jews, indeed, were obliged of old to put away their idolatrous wives, Ezr 10:3; but their case was quite different. They were absolutely forbid to marry idolatrous women; but the persons here spoken of were married while they were both in a state of heathenism.

14 

14:1 At that time - When our Lord had spent about a year in his public ministry. Tetrarch - King of a fourth part of his father's dominions. Mar 6:14.

14:2 He is risen from the dead - Herod was a Sadducee: and the Sadducees denied the resurrection of the dead. But Sadduceeism staggers when conscience awakes.

14:3 His brother Philip's wife - Who was still alive. Mar 6:17.

14:4 It is not lawful for thee to have her - It was not lawful indeed for either of them to have her. For her father Aristobulus was their own brother. John's words were rough, like his raiment.He would not break the force of truth by using soft words, even to a king.

14:5 He would have put him to death - ln his fit of passion; but he was then restrained by fear of the multitude; and afterward by the reverence he bore him.

14:6 The daughter of Herodias - Afterward infamous for a life suitable to this beginning.

14:8 Being before instructed by her mother - Both as to the matter and manner of her petition: She said, Give me here - Fearing if he had time to consider, he would not do it: John the Baptist's head in a charger - A large dish or bowl.

14:9 And the king was sorry - Knowing that John was a good man.Yet for the oath's sake - So he murdered an innocent man from mere tenderness of conscience.

14:10 And he sent and beheaded John in the prison, and his head was given to the damsel - How mysterious is the providence, which left the life of so holy a man in such infamous hands! which permitted it to be sacrificed to the malice of an abandoned harlot, the petulancy of a vain girl, and the rashness of a foolish, perhaps drunken prince, who made a prophet's head the reward of a dance! But we are sure the Almighty will repay his servants in another world for what ever they suffer in this.

14:13 Jesus withdrew into a desert place -

1. To avoid Herod:
2. Because of the multitude pressing upon him, Mar 6:32: and
3. To talk with his disciples, newly returned from their progress, Luk 9:10: apart - From all but his disciples. Joh 6:1.