Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord?
Ver. 1. Am I not an apostle, &c.] That is to say, Do I require you to do anything more than I myself do daily, in parting with my proper rights? All things in a minister should be exemplary, and for imitation; Titus 2:7; "In all things show thyself a pattern of good works." The word τυπος, there used, signifies a thing that makes the stamp on the coin, or the mould whereinto the vessel is cast and shaped.
Have I not seen the Lord?] viz. In visions and ecstasies. The false apostles reported him no apostle because he had not conversed with Christ in the flesh. It is ordinary with seducers to detract from the truth's champions, that they may be the better esteemed of. Thus Bellarmine rejecteth the fathers and others that make not for him as heretics. To Iraneus, Tertullian, Eusebius, and Luther (said he) I answer, Omne manifesti haeretici sunt, they are all manifest heretics. So Arminius's course was to detract from the authority and fame of Calvin, Zanchius, Beza, Martyr, &c., that he might build himself upon better men's ruins. (Synod. Dordec. Praefat.) The Jesuits speak most basely of St Paul, a making much against many of their tenets; and stick not to teach in their pulpits, that he was not secure of his preaching but by conference with St Peter; nor that he dared publish his Epistle till St Peter had allowed them. Zuinglius mentioneth some bold fellows in his time, A. D. 1519, who spake very contemptuously of this great apostle: Quis tandem Paulus, &c. Calvin telleth that Quintinus the Libertine called him Vas fractum, a broken vessel. And Leo Judae, in his preface to Bullinger's book against the Catabaptists, noteth, that albeit there were various sorts of those sects, and all at odds among themselves, yet they all concurred in this, that they vexed and disparaged the godly preachers of the truth. And do they not still antiquum obtinere, hold to their old wont?