The Argument of Saint Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians

It is well enough known, that Ephesus was a city of the lesser Asia, renowned for many causes. And Saint Luke reports in the Acts, how our Lord got himself a people there by the service of Saint Paul, how the Church began there, and what furtherance it had. As for me, I will touch nothing here, but only that which belongs properly to the argument of the Epistle. Saint Paul had taught the Ephesians the pure doctrine of the Gospel. And when he was prisoner at Rome, perceiving that they had need to be confirmed, he wrote this Epistle to them. In the three first Chapters he stands chiefly upon the praising and magnifying of God's grace. For in the beginning of the first Chapter, after his greetings, he speaks of God's free election, to the end they should know that they were now called to the kingdom of heaven, because they had been predestinated to life before they were born. And herein shines forth God's wonderful mercy, that the saving of our souls comes of God's free adoption, as of the true and natural wellspring thereof. And since men's wits are too weak to conceive so high a secret: he prays God to enlighten the Ephesians with the full knowledge of Christ.

In the second Chapter, the better to set forth the greatness of God's grace, he puts them in remembrance how wretched they were till they were called to Jesus Christ, by comparing their present state, and their former state together. For we can never perceive sufficiently how greatly we are beholden to our Lord Jesus, nor consider as becomes us how great his benefits are toward us, except it be laid before us on the contrary part, how wretched our state is without him. Also he amplifies the matter again, saying, that they had been Gentiles and strangers to the promises of eternal life, which God had made only to the Jews.

In the third Chapter he shows, that his Apostleship had been appointed peculiarly for the Gentiles, to the intent that they who had been strangers a long time, might now be grafted into the people of God. And because it was an unaccustomed thing, and such a one as troubled many men's minds with the newness thereof: He calls it a secret, hidden from all times, saying nevertheless, that the uttering of the same secret was committed to him. Towards the end he prays God again to give the Ephesians the perfect and lively knowledge of Jesus Christ, so as they may not desire to know any other thing. By which words he not only goes about to make the Ephesians acknowledge the great number of benefits and gracious gifts that God had bestowed upon them, and to show themselves thankful for the same, by yielding themselves wholly to him: he also intends rather to put them out of all [illegible] of their own calling. For by all likelihood Saint Paul was afraid, lest the false Apostles would step in to trouble their faith, by making them believe that they had been but half instructed. For whereas they had been Gentiles, and had newly received the true Christian doctrine: they had not heard the Ceremonies nor Circumcision spoken of. But they that intended to bring the Law into use among the Christians, said, that all such as were not consecrated to God by Circumcision, were unholy. For it was their common song, that none ought to be reckoned among the people of God, which were not circumcised: and that all the Ceremonies commanded by Moses, ought to be kept. And for that cause they spoke evil of Saint Paul, for making Jesus Christ common to the Gentiles, as well as to the Jews, and affirmed that his Apostleship was a desecration of the heavenly doctrine, because he did after that sort offer and set forth the covenant of grace to unclean people without any difference at all. Therefore to the end that the Ephesians, being assailed with such slanders, should not change their minds: he intended to give them a remedy. And so, whereas on the one side he tells them so advisedly, that their being called to the Gospel, was for that they had been chosen before the making of the world: he warns them on the other side, not to think that the Gospel came to them by haphazard at the appointment of men, or that it lighted in their laps at an adventure. For he tells them, that whereas Christ was preached to them: that preaching was nothing else than the uttering or publishing of God's everlasting determination. When he sets the unhappy plight of their former life before their eyes, he therewith puts them in mind, that their getting out of so deep a gulf, was through the singular and wonderful mercy of God. And whereas he speaks of the Apostleship which was committed to him towards the Gentiles: he does it to strengthen them in the faith which they had once received, because their calling into the communion of Christ's Church, was wrought by the will of God. Nevertheless, look how many sentences here be, so many warnings are there to cheer up the Ephesians to acknowledge God's benefits.

In the fourth Chapter he describes the means by which our Lord governs and maintains his Church: namely by the Gospel which is preached by men. Whereupon it follows, that that is the very full point of perfection, and that the Church cannot otherwise be kept up unimpaired. And therefore the Apostle's meaning is, to commend to the Ephesians the ministry, by which God reigns among us. Afterward he comes to speak of the fruits of preaching, that is to say, of innocence, holiness, and of all duties of a Christian man. And he not only teaches what the lives of Christians ought to be in general: but also interlaces particular instructions, which concern every man's peculiar calling or vocation.