A89503:278
A Practical Commentary on the Epistle of Jude
A practical commentary, or An exposition with notes on the Epistle of Jude. Delivered (for the most part) in sundry weekly lectures at Stoke-Newington in Middlesex. By Thomas Manton, B.D. and minister of Covent-Garden.
London: printed by J.M. for Luke Fawn, 1658
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
4. It informeth us who are best to deal in matters of religion: those that are religious, that can call it a common Salvation; that is, common to them with others, they have share in it, and therefore they can best defend it: differences are aggravated when carnal men intermeddle in religious controversies, but those are likest to deal with most purity of zeal and love that can say your salvation is their salvation; so in the next verse, They turn the grace of our God into wantonness, they that have an interest in grace cannot endure to see it abused.
4. It informeth us who are best to deal in matters of religion: those that are religious, that can call it a common Salvation; that is, common to them with others, they have share in it, and therefore they can best defend it: differences are aggravated when carnall men intermeddle in religious controversies, but those are likest to deal with most purity of zeal and love that can say your salvation is their salvation; so in the next verse, They turn the grace of our God into wantonness, they that have an interest in grace cannot endure to see it abused.
5. It forbiddeth scorn of the meanest Christian, they have as good hopes through grace as you have in Jesus Christ: all are one, Master and Servant, rich and poor. Onesimus a poor runagate servant, yet being converted, Paul calleth him his faithful and beloved brother, Philem. 10. In earthly relation there is a difference, yet in regard of the common faith and common salvation we are all one.
I have now done with the first part of the occasion, his earnestness in promoting their good. I now come to the second part, the urgency of the present necessity [it was needful for me to write to you, and exhort you,] which is said to show that this Epistle was not only occasioned by the fervency of his own bone, but the present exigence and necessity as affairs then stood; the School of Simon, the Gnostics, and divers other heretics of a like loose strain and libertine spirit, sought to withdraw and alienate them from the truth, for that was the necessity here expressed, as appeareth by the next verse; Exhortations the more necessary, the more pressing; need quickens both writer and reader, and the less arbitrary things are, the more throughly we go about them.