But we are bound to always give thanks to God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because God chose you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief in the truth;
The old interpreter has rendered it first-fruits, (686) as being in the Greek ἀπαρχήν; but as almost all the Greek manuscripts have απ᾿ ἀρχὢς, I have in preference followed this reading. Should any one prefer first-fruits, the meaning will be, that believers have been, as it were, set aside for a sacred offering, by a metaphor taken from the ancient custom of the law. Let us, however, hold by what is more generally received, that he says that the Thessalonians were chosen from the beginning 