II. 5. "A holy priesthood." The term priest is ap plied to every true believer, who is enabled to offer up himself a spiritual sacrifice acceptable to God through Christ.→→→ Horne's Introduction, vol. iii. page 274.

II.-8. "Whereunto also they were appointed." Not appointed to be disobedient; but, in the event of their being so, appointed to stumble in the manner named.-See remarks at Romans ix. 18.

III.- -18.

"For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust." The notion of the victim being substituted to suffer death and be consumed in the room of the transgressor for whom it was offered, is very antient, and was commonly received among Gentiles and Jews, as well as Christians. Thus Ovid supposes the sacrificed animal to be a vicarious substitute, the several parts of which were given as equivalents for what was due by the offerers :--

Cor pro corde, precor; pro fibra sumite fibras ;

Hanc animam vobis pro meliore damus.

1

-See Burder's Oriental Customs, vol. ii. p. 383.

III.-19, 20. "By which also he went and preached to the spirits in prison," &c. This passage is of a difficult and rather doubtful interpretation. It gives us to understand that Christ in his pre-existence and divine nature, per eam divinam virtutem quâ resuscitatus fuit, went and preached to the antediluvians in Hades. The interpretation given by Bp. Horsley seems the most satisfactory; "The interpretation of this whole passage," says he, "turns upon the expression spirits in prison, the sense of which I shall endeavour to ascertain, as the key to the meaning of the whole. It is hardly necessary to mention that spirits here can signify no other spirits than the souls of men; for we read not of any preaching of Christ to any other race of beings than mankind. The Apostle's assertion, therefore is this, that Christ went and preached

to souls of men in prison. The invisible mansion of departed. spirits, though certainly not a place of penal confinement to the good, is nevertheless in some respects a prison. It is a place of seclusion from the external world, a place of unfinished happiness, consisting in rest, security, and hope, more than enjoyment. It is a place which the souls of men never would have entered, had not sin introduced death, and from which there is no exit by any natural means for those who have once entered. The deliverance of the saints from it is. to be effected by our Lord's power. As a place of confinement therefore, though not of punishment, it may well be called a prison. The original word however in this text imports not of necessity so much as this, but merely a place of safe keeping; for so this passage might be rendered with great exactness: He went and preached to the spirits in safe keeping. And the invisible mansion of departed souls is to the righteous a place of safe keeping, where they are preserved under the shadow of God's right hand, as their condition is sometimes described in Scripture, till the season shall arrive for their advancement to future glory; as the souls of the wicked, on the other hand, are reserved, in the other division of the same place, unto the judgment of the great day. Now, if Christ went and preached to souls of men thus in prison, or in safe keeping, surely he went to the prison of those souls, or to the place of their custody; and what place that should be but the hell of the Apostles' creed, to which our Lord descended, I have not met with the critic that could explain: The souls in custody, or in prison, to whom our Saviour went in his disembodied soul, and preached, were those which sometime were disobedient. The expression, sometime were, or one while had been disobedient, implies, that they were recovered however from that disobedience, and, before their death, had been brought to repentance and faith in the Redeemer to To such souls he went and preached. But what did

come.

he preach to departed souls, and what could be the end of his preaching? Certainly he preached neither repentance nor faith; for the preaching of either comes too late to the departed soul. These souls had believed and repented, or they had not been in that part of the nether regions, which the soul of the Redeemer visited. Nor was the end of his preaching any liberation of them from what we know not what purgato rial pains, of which the Scriptures give not the slightest intimation. But if he went to proclaim to them (and to proclaim or publish, is the true sense of the word to preach) the glad tidings, that he had actually offered the sacrifice of their redemption, and was about to appear before the Father as their intercessor, in the merit of his own blood, this was a preaching fit to be addressed to departed souls, and would give new animation and assurance to their hope of the consummation, in due season, of their bliss; and this, it may be presumed, was the end of his preaching."-See Valpy's Greek Testament.

It is well known to those acquainted with the original, that the order of the words will give a meaning, in some respects, different from the above interpretation, though equally as satisfactory.

IV.-6. "For this cause was the Gospel preached also to them that are dead." This refers to the Gentile world, as dead, or destitute of that spiritual life which the Gospel is calculated to impart.

IV.-8. "For charity shall cover the multitude of sins." See James v. 20.

V. 4. "The chief shepherd." In antient times, when flocks and herds of cattle were very numerous, the care of them required the attention of many shepherds; and that every thing might be conducted with regularity, it was neces sary that one should preside over the rest. This we find was customary; and hence 1 Sam. xxi. 7. we read that Doeg was the chief of the herdsmen that belonged to Saul; and in some

curious remarks on the sheep-walks of Spain, published in the Gentleman's Magazine for May, 1764, we are informed, that in this country (where it is not at all surprising to meet with eastern customs still preserved from the Moors) they have to this day, over each flock of sheep, a chief shepherd. "Ten thousand compose a flock, which is divided into ten tribes. One man has the conduct of all. He must be the owner of four or five hundred sheep, strong, active, vigilant, intelligent in pasture, in the weather, and in the diseases of sheep. He has absolute dominion over fifty shepherds and fifty dogs, five of each to a tribe. He chooses them, he chastises them, or discharges them at will. He is the præpositus or the chief shepherd of the whole flock."-Burder's O. Customs, vol. i. p. 387.

2 PETER.

Through the righteousness of God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ." More correctly: Of our God and Saviour.-See Titus ii. 13.

I.-20. "No prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation." See Romans xii. 6.

II- -15. "Balaam the son of Bosor." In Numb. xxii. 5. Balaam is called the son of Beor; but, independently of one MS. and the Syriac version which read Beor, the mistake probably arose from not attending sufficiently to the similarity of the Hebrew letters.

III.8. "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years," &c. Not that one day is with God literally no longer a duration than the other, as the schoolmen have foolishly taught; but the meaning is, That what is a thousand years distant, is with God as certain, as if it were to be effected the very next moment.-Clark.

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1 JOHN.

I. 8-10. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us," &c. The same apostle affirms 1 John iii. 6-9. "Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not. Whosoever is born of God, doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." This is an apparent contradiction; but the texts must be explained, so as to agree with one another. Now, from Scripture and experience, we are certain, that the first passage must be literally understood. At the dedication of the temple, Solomon said: If they sin against thee, and thou be angry, (for there is no man that sinneth not) 1 Kings viii. 46. And in Eccl. vii. 20. For there is not a just man upon the earth, that doeth good and sinneth not. The explanation of the second passage, therefore, must be regulated by the established signification of the first; that both may agree. When it is affirmed that even good men cannot say they have no sin; the Apostle speaks of occasional acts, from which none are free. When St. John says, that he who is born of God doth not commit sin, he evidently means habi tually, as the slave of sin; and this is incompatible with a state of grace. Both passages therefore agree, as the one refers to particular deeds, and the other to general practice. Horne's Introduction, vol. ii. p. 566.

III.-6-9. "Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not," &c. See remark at 1 John i. 8-10.

IV.-7. “Let us love one another." It is reported, that when the apostle St. John was grown old and past preaching, he used to be led to the church of Ephesus, and said only these words to the people: Little children love one another; and the importance of the argument by which