the apple-tree, an apple. Beautiful
specimens, indeed, would these be--fine tongues, throats and ears,
fine children, fine apples.

6. What sort of foolish, perverted individuals are they who so teach?
Well might you exclaim: "What impossible undertakings, what useless
burdens and hardships, they assume!" Yes, what but burdens do they
deserve who pervert God's truth into falsehood; who change the gifts
God designed for man's benefit into acts of service rendered by man to
God; who, unwilling to abide in the common faith, aspire to exalted
and peculiar place as priests and beings superior to other Christians?
They deserve to be overwhelmed in astonishing folly and madness, and
to be burdened with useless labors and hardships in their attempts to
do impossible things. They cheat the world of its blessings while they
fill themselves. It is said of them (Ps 14, 4-5): "Have all the
workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat
bread, and call not upon Jehovah?"--that is, they live not in faith.
And continuing--"There were they in great fear"; meaning that here and
there they make that a matter of conscience which is not, because they
cling to works and not to faith.

EACH MEMBER CONTENT WITH ITS OWN POWERS.

7. In the second place, the simile teaches that each member of the
body is content with the other members, and rejoices in its powers,
not being solicitous as to whether any be superior to itself. For
instance, the nose is inferior in office to the eye, yet in the
relation they sustain to each other the former is not envious of the
latter; rather, it rejoices in the superior function the eye performs.
On the other hand, the eye does not despise the nose; it rejoices in
all the powers of the other members. As Paul says elsewhere (1 Cor 12,
23): "Those parts of the body, which we think to be less honorable,
upon these we bestow more abundant honor." Thus we see that hand and
eye, regardless of their superior office, labor carefully to clothe
and adorn the less honorable members. They make the best use of their
own distinction to remove the dishonor and shame of the inferior
members.

8. However unequal the capacities and distinction of the individual
members of the body, they are equal in that they are all parts of the
same body. The eye cannot claim any better right to a place in the
body than the least distinguished member has. Nor can it boast greater
authority over the body than any other me