OLBGrk;
This sentence is not without its difficulties: here are two questions:
1. What is meant by krima, which we both here and elsewhere translate damnation.
2. How they cast off their first faith. Many think the Greek word by us translated damnation, ought to have had a softer sense, it being certainly capable of it. Some think it signifies here no more than guilt, or a blot; others, a public infamy; others, the judgment of good men against them. But it may be we cannot so well determine this without understanding what is meant by their first faith, which they are here said to have cast off: by which some understand their profession of Christianity; others, their promise or engagement to the church, not to marry. The latter sense supposeth that all those widows that were taken into the ministry of the church before mentioned, promised that they would keep themselves unmarried, which is a most groundless supposition. I do rather think that by their first faith, he means their first or former profession of Christianity; which was a crime that did expose them not only to the judgment and censure of sober Christians, but to eternal damnation. I shall offer my own sense of this text thus: it is certain these Christians were lilies among thorns, a small handful amongst a far greater number of pagans; and it is not improbable, that some younger widows, out of a desire to marry, might marry to pagans, and be by them tempted to apostacy from the Christian profession; upon which the apostle orders, that none under sixty years of age should be henceforth taken into the ministry of the church, lest doing such a thing when they were under that character, it should be a greater scandal. This seems the more probable from 1 Timothy 5:15, where the apostle adds, for some are already turned aside after Satan.