Ephesians 5:12 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

It is a shame even to speak, &c.— Nothing could be more impure and abominable than some of the religious nocturnal mysteries of the heathens, to which the Apostle seems here in the primary sense to refer. Bishop Warburton, agreeably to his system, asserts, that if the lower sort of mysteries among them were first intended by the magistrates to impress the mindsof the people with a belief and sense of future rewards and punishments, and the higher sort of them to instruct persons of more reflection and penetration thanthe rest, in the knowlege of the true God, and the other great principles of natural religion, they were long before the Apostle's time greatly corrupted, and degraded to the most detestable purposes; so that some persons in public characters, by no means remarkable for the purity of their own morals, thought it absolutely necessary, in order to prevent the most scandalous and profligate disorders, to prohibit the celebration of them. Monsieur Saurin has observed a sarcasm in this clause seldom attended to; as if it were insinuated here, "They are called απορρητα, things not to be spoken of: true, says the Apostle, they are properly so! things not too sacred, but too infamous to be mentioned." See his Sermons, tom. 8: p. 198 and Div. Leg. b. 2: sect. 4.