Truly the signs of an apostle were done among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds.
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
Paul humbles himself only to rise to his true height. He talks about his patience because for a long time he put up with them as if they were sick people. His intention was to cure them of their errors by using the medicine of signs and wonders. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
Truly the signs of an apostle. The genuine tokens of an Apostle were: (1.) patience under contempt, poverty, persecutions, dangers (Anselm). (2.) Miracles. He calls these signs of the true faith, of heavenly doctrine, or signs given by God working supernaturally and all-powerfully, and consequently bearing witness to the truth of Paul"s doctrine and to his Divine mission. He calls them also wonders, from the effect they were calculated to produce on the mind, and also mighty deeds or works of God"s omnipotence, of which he was the instrument.
It was incumbent on the Apostles, as the bearers of a new Gospel to the world, to prove their doctrine and apostleship by miracles, otherwise they would have exacted a credulous assent, and could not have been distinguished from impostors, like the false apostles. This should be observed by Protestants and their new apostles, Calvin and Luther, who are bringing in a reformed doctrine: this, being new, demands to be supported by miracles. Since th...
'Look not thou at this,' he says, 'whether I be mean and little, but whether you have not enjoyed those things which from an Apostle it was meet you should enjoy.' Yet he did not say 'mean,' but what was lower, nothing. For where is the good of being great, and of use to nobody? Even as there is no advantage in a skilful physician if he heals none of those that be sick. 'Do not then,' he says, 'scrutinize this that I am nothing, but consider that, that wherein ye ought to have been benefitted, I have failed in nothing, but have given proof of mine Apostleship. There ought then to have been no need for me to say anything.' Now he thus spoke, not as wanting to be commended, (for how should he, he who counted heaven itself to be a small thing in comparison with his longing after Christ?) but as desiring their salvation. Then lest they should say, 'And what is it to us, even though you were not a whit behind the very chiefest Apostles?' he therefore added,
The signs of an Apostle were w...
The Gentiles to the exercise of some eminent heavenly virtue, is, by the visible proofs of some marked (divine) regard, a terror to her Gentile husband, so as to make him less ready to annoy her, less active in laying snares for her, less diligent in playing the spy over her. He has felt "mighty works;