Immorality Rebuked
(Proverbs 5:1–23)

1we have it from all quarters, that incest is practis'd among you, and such as is not among the Gentiles, that of a man's having his father's wife. 2this you have made a matter of levity, instead of being concern'd in discarding him that has done such an action.

3as for me, though I am absent in person, yet being present by my authority, with regard to him that has committed this fact, I am come to the same resolution, as if I was present, 4that is, when you are assembled, and I virtually there, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 5to deliver him up to satan, to suffer corporal punishment, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ.

6Your levity is very indecent: don't you know that a little leaven infects the whole mass? 7purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new mass, since you should be without leaven, for Christ our paschal lamb has been sacrificed for us. 8therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with unaffected sincerity and truth.

Expel the Immoral Brother

9When I formerly writ to you, not to keep company with the vicious: 10I did not mean the vicious Gentiles, the misers, the raparees, or with idolaters; for then you must have gone out of the world. 11but my meaning was, not to keep company with any christian known to be vicious, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or rapacious, no not even to eat with such a one. 12for what have I to do to judge those who are without the church; but are not you to judge those that are within? 13those that are without, God will judge, therefore expel the libertine from your community.