Moreover, brethren,— It seems, from what is said in this chapter, as if the Corinthians had told St. Paul that the temptations and constraints they were under, of going to their heathen neighbours' feasts upon their sacrifices, were so many and so great, that there was no avoiding it; and therefore they might go to them without any offence to God, or danger to themselves. To which St. Paul answers, that eating of things which were known and acknowledged to be offered to idols, was partaking in the idolatrous worship; and therefore they were to prefer even the danger of persecution to such a compliance; for God would find a way for them to escape, 1 Corinthians 10:1-22. See Locke.
I would not that ye, &c.— St. Paul had just before expressed his ideas of the possibility of becoming a castaway, even under the highest dispensations of religion: here, he endeavours to excite in the Corinthians a sense of their danger in this respect, by reminding them that the Jewish, as well as the Christian church, had received great tokens of divine favour. Such were to the Jews their passage through the Red Sea, under the conduct of the miraculous cloud, Exodus 13 and their supernatural sustenance in the wilderness. Such, and analogous to these, are the Christian sacraments. As the former did not secure the Jew from apostacy, so neither will the latter the Christian. By baptized unto Moses, the Apostle means, "initiated into that kind of purification, which is proper to the law," here called Moses; as the Gospel-state is often expressed by the name of Christ, and the state of depraved nature by the name of Adam. See Heylin, and the next note.