2 Corinthians 8:14 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

But by an equality, &c.— I would only recommend an equality. Heylin. The Apostle does not mean that Christians are obliged to be all upon a level, but that there ought to be such mutual assistance and relief among them, as that the wants and necessities of all might be supplied; and in that sense the most indigent might be brought nearer to an equality with the rich. The Corinthians at Jerusalem, for a good while, were in want of nothing; theywho had lands or possessions sold them, and they had all things in common: but now, at the distance of five-and-twenty years from that aera, the frequent losses they endured by confiscations, &c. the increase of the number of Christians, and the gradual consumption of the money arising from sales, reduced them to great extremities of poverty. But though the Christian Jews were poor and oppressed, the Corinthians were rich and prosperous; and therefore, it may be said, there was no reason to expect that what the Apostle here mentions, would ever happen to the latter,—that their [the Jews] abundance should be a supply for the want of the Corinthians. To thisit may be sufficient to reply, that all human affairs are unstable and uncertain; Corinth itself, from great prosperity, had been desolated in the Roman war by Memmius some time before; or, supposing that no such event should happen to them again, yet particular persons might be distressed, or the whole body of Christians there reduced by persecutions, though their city continued to flou