An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

And for the Object matter, the Scripture describeth it in these Particulars:

First, That what a man suffereth for, it must not be for any sin, that is ¹justly punishable by the Law: It must not be for our folly and busy meddling in such things wherein we have no call. The Apostle Peter (1 Pet. cap. 3. 15, 16.) speaketh notably to this; for giving the people of God in that Chapter, great encouragements to suffer, he cometh in with a caution, They must take heed for what they suffer: which is laid down positively, and then oppositely. Positively, as a Christian; it must be for professing and doing such things as Christ requireth: Let it not be strange fire, but the fire from the Altar. If thou wouldst have comfort, it must be for doing that which as a Christian thou art bound to do. And the opposite to this, is to suffer as a murderer, as a thief, or which is more general, as a busybody in other mens matters: [Greek or Hebrew]; that is, one who busily spieth into, and meddleth with those things that he hath no call to; it's not his Office to deal in. Now this must not be understood, as the world will judge a man a busybody. If a Minister, a Magistrate, or any in Office be zealous against sin, and see to the punishing of it, the profane ones of the world call this an an hot busy meddling. So if private Christians cannot bear the impieties they see committed in the places where they live, but do ⟨p. 202⟩faithfully and boldly admonish and reprove such offenders; and if this doth no good, then they will proceed further, to the Magistrate and Officers to complain of such, that sin may be punished, God honoured, and public judgments prevented. If (I say) private Christians be thus stirring (as they ought to be, unless they will have other mens sins lie at their doors, and they become thereby very guilty;) then what an out-cry is made? these are factious, troublesome, disquieting follows. So that to judge who is a busy-body, and when a man is guilty of it, you must have recourse to the Scripture, and to sound casuistical Divinity, applying the general rules of Scripture to particulars, and not to the common voice and noise of people in the world. That good zealous Prophet for God Elisha, who because he burned with fire for God, had a wonderful reward thereof, to be carried up in a fiery Chariot to Heaven, yet because he would not endure the ungodliness of Ahab and Jezebel, what is said to him? Then art the troubler of Israel.