r cakes. How else should we
gentiles get the idea of cakes on Easter, when at our Passover we, by
faith, eat the Paschal Lamb, Christ? We are admonished to partake of
the true unleavened bread, that life and conduct may accord with faith
in Christ, whom we have learned to know. Paul's admonition begins:

"Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?"

5. This by way of introducing the succeeding admonitions. Leaven is a
common figure with the apostle, one he uses frequently, almost
proverbially; employing it, too, in his epistle to the Galatians (ch.
5, 9). Christ, also, gives us a Scripture parable of the leaven. Mt
13, 33. It is the nature of leaven that a small quantity mixed with a
lump of dough will pervade and fill the whole lump until its own acid
nature has been imparted to it. This Paul makes a figure of spiritual
things as regards both doctrine and life.

6. In Galatians 5, 9 he makes it more especially typify false
doctrine. For it is just as true that the introduction of an error in
an article of faith will soon work injury to the whole and result in
the loss of Christ. Thus it was with the Galatians. The one thing
insisted upon by the false apostles was circumcision, though they
fully intended to preach the Gospel of Christ. Such innovation will
pursue its course with destructive sweep until even the uncontaminated
part becomes worthless; the once pure mass is wholly corrupted. The
apostle writes to the Galatians (ch. 5, 2): "Behold, I Paul say unto
you, that, if ye receive circumcision, Christ will profit you
nothing." Again (verse 4), "Ye are severed from Christ--ye are fallen
away from grace."

But in this text he has reference more particularly to an erroneous
idea concerning life and conduct. In this instance it is likewise true
that, once the flesh be allowed any license, and liberty be abused,
and that under the name of the Gospel, there is introduced a leaven
which will speedily corrupt faith and conscience, and continue its
work until Christ and the Gospel are lost. Such would have been the
fate of the Corinthians had not Paul saved them from it by this
epistle admonishing and urging them to purge out the leaven of
license; for they had begun to practice great wantonness, and had
given rise to sects and factions which tended to subvert the one
Gospel and the one faith.

7. This is, then, wise counsel and serious admonition, that faithful
guard be maintained against the infusion