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TEACHING OF ST. PAUL
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through before the exact value of any specific declaration is fixed. As with the Lord Himself, so with His apostles; nothing is in such wise delivered to the Church as to settle the problems of practical life in advance of their actual emergence in Christian experience. Bearing these considerations in mind we may conveniently gather the teaching of St. Paul under five heads:

I.—His general attitude towards sexual sin.

II.—His consistent opposition to asceticism.

III.—His doctrine with respect to the female sex.

IV.—His ruling as to divorce.

V.—His ruling as to mixed marriages.


I.—Every reader of the Pauline Epistles knows that the apostle everywhere manifests a horror and dread of sexual sin. As a devout and spiritually-minded Pharisee he had been taught to regard with deep aversion the moral licentiousness of the Gentile world; and this hereditary zeal for purity had been stimulated