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…

To discover this truth, consider

First, That there may be a two-fold participation of, or fellowship with others ¹that are in afflictions:

1. 11. A two-fold communion with the afflicted. 1. When a man living in peace and quietness himself, yet is affected with their sufferings.

1. When though we our selves are freed and delivered from all troubles, enjoying all outward peace and quietness, yet we are compassionately affected with the condition of all those members of Christ upon the earth who may be in an afflicted and troubled estate. For seeing all the people of God make up one body, if any part thereof suffer, the other parts condole and suffer with it: Insomuch that it is plain, thou art a dead part in the body, destitute of all spiritual life, if thou canst see the Church of God, or any part thereof lie wounded like the man of Jericho, and thou like the Priest and the Levite pass by, not laying it to heart. This fellowship in suffering is part of the Apostles meaning, which he attributeth to the Corinthians, and is indeed a good and sure hope of grace in whomsoever we find it, Heb. 13. 3. The Apostle there exhorts to remember such as are in bonds, but how? Not in a superficial careless manner, but as cordially and affectionately, as if we were bound with them. Now consider, that if thou wert impoverished, if thou wert banished, if thou wert imprisoned, how much would it possess thy heart all the day long? No less is to be done for others, whom God thus exercises. The Scripture doth much delight in the comparison of the Church with the natural body, and that because of the intimate conjunction and sympathy which is between the members