You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men:
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
Evidence of salvation is an epistle in itself. The salvation of the Corinthians was in Paul’s heart and in the hearts of those who were with him, for he was always thinking about it. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
Ye are our epistle. You, 0 Corinthians, converted by my efforts, are to me like an epistle of commendation read and understood by all, which I can show as my credentials to whom I like. As the work recommends the workman, and the seal faithfully is represented by its image, so do you commend me as though you were a commendatory letter, sealed by yourselves. For all know what you were before your conversion—drunken, gluttonous, given up to impurity and other evil lusts. Corinth was then an emporium, as famous for its vices as its wares. But now all men see that you have been completely changed, through my preaching, into different men—temperate, chaste, meek, humble, devout, liberal. This your conversion, therefore, is my commendatory letter, i.e, the public testimony of my preaching before all people.
Written in our hearts. You have been converted by me, and indelibly written and engraven on my heart. This "epistle" was twice written by S. Paul. (1.) He wrote it actually when he insti...
You are our epistle, better, and of greater force, than any commendatory epistle, written and engraven in my heart, by the love and affection I bear you. You may also be looked upon as the epistle of Christ, because of your zeal for the Christian religion, written upon the soft and fleshy tables of your tender affections, with which you have received, and kept his precepts; and not like the precepts of the law, which were engraven on tables of stone, which the hard-hearted Jews did not keep. (Witham)
What means this, you are? 'Did we need to be commended to others, we should have produced you before them instead of an epistle.' And this he said in the former Epistle. For the seal of mine Apostleship are you. 1 Corinthians 9:2 But he does not here say it in this manner, but in irony so as to make his question, Do we need epistles of commendation? more cutting. And in allusion to the false apostles, he added, as do some, [epistles of commendation] to you, or letters of commendation from you to others. Then because what he had said was severe, he softens it by adding, You are our epistle, written in our hearts, known of all,
