2. _Recalls their extravagant expression of admiration on their first reception of his teaching._--"Ye know how through infirmity I preached at the first. My temptation ye despised not; but received me as an angel of God. . . . Ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me" (vers. 13, 14, 15). His physical weakness, which might have moved the contempt of others, elicited the sympathy of the warm-hearted Galatians. They listened with eagerness and wonder to the Gospel he preached. The man, with his humiliating infirmity, was lost in the charm of his message. They were thankful that, though his sickness was the reason of his being detained among them, it was the opportunity of their hearing the Gospel. Had he been an angel from heaven, or Jesus Christ Himself, they could not have welcomed him more rapturously. They would have made any sacrifice to assure him of their regard and affection. 3. _Shows he was not less their friend because he rebuked them._--"Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?" (ver. 16). And now they rush, with Gallic-like fickleness, to the opposite extreme. Because he attacks the new fancies with which they have become enamoured, and probes them with some wholesome and unwelcome truths, they imagine he has become their enemy. Not so; he is but using the privilege of a true and faithful friend. +II. He warns them against the seductive tactics of false teachers.+--1. _Their zealous flattery was full of danger._ "They zealously affect you, but not well; they would exclude you" (ver. 17). They are courting you, these present suitors for your regard, dishonourably; they want to shut us out and have you to themselves, that you may pay court to them. They pretend to be zealous for your interests; but it is their own they seek. They would exclude you from all opportunities of salvation--yea, from Christ Himself. The flatterer should be always suspected. The turning away from sound doctrine goes hand in hand with a predilection for such teachers as tickle the ear, while they teach only such things as correspond to the sinful inclinations of the hearers. 2. _Though genuine zeal is commendable._--"It is good to be zealously affected always in a good thing" (ver. 18). Christian zeal must be seen not only to correspond and to be adapted to the intellect but must also be in harmony with the highest and profoundest sentiments of our nature. It must not be exhibited in the dry, pedantic divisions of a scholastic theology; nor must it be set forth and tricked out in the light drapery of an artificial rhetoric, in prettiness of style, in measured sentences, with an insipid floridness, and in the form of elegantly feeble essays. No; it must come from the soul in the language of earnest conviction and strong feeling.