1 Corinthians 5:1

1 Corinthians 5:1. It is actually reported that there is fornication among you. The word is used here in its widest sense for all violations of the seventh commandment.

and such fornication as is not even among the Gentiles, [1] that one of you hath his father's wife not his own mother, but his step-mother (after the death of his father). Such connection, expressly forbidden in Leviticus 18:8, is abhorrent to nature. Though not absolutely unknown to the heathen, Cicero speaks of it as a crime incredible, and, with the single exception of the case he is speaking of, unheard of. [2] How such a church member should have been tolerated, even for a day, is the difficulty. To say, with some, that since the conversion of a Pagan to Judaism was held to dissolve all former relationships, a Christian convert might deem himself at liberty, and by the Church be allowed, to marry within the scripturally forbidden degrees, is absurd. For not only is there no evidence that the Jews at this time held any such principles, and every probability that they did not, but this connection was plainly regarded, alike by Jews and Gentiles, as monstrous. Still, if the social position of the parties was considerable, the office-bearers may have been reluctant to meddle with the case; and fearing to drive the man from bad to worse, they may have hoped, by tender treatment to soften his heart. And doubtless the laxity of morals at Corinth, which would not fail to leave its evil effects on real converts, tended to blunt the edge of that abhorrence which such a case was fitted to awaken.

[1] The word “named,” in the received text, appears to be a gloss from Ephesians 5:3.

[2] Scelus incredibile, et prater hanc unam (mulierem) in omni vita inauditum (Pro Cluentio, 5, 6).