COMMENTARY ON FIRST PETER.

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T is by his Commentary on the First Epistle of Peter the Apostle, that Leighton is best known. pared it for the pulpit of Newbattle, between his thirtieth and forty-second year. What special apparatus he used in the study of his subject we cannot tell, as it was not then the fashion to name all the authors consulted. We can fancy him sitting down with his Greek Testament, his Cotton's Concordance, his Pasor, or Scapula Lexicon, to get at the mind of the Spirit as written down by the hand of the Apostle. Then, with that spiritual insight which God had given him, he penetrated beneath the surface of grammatical investigation, beyond the veil of scholarly analysis of words, into the inner shrine where clear vision of Divine things is granted in answer to that prayer, "Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law." He has written on the fly-leaf of his De Imitando Christo, a beautiful book printed by Arnold Birkman at Cologne, 1564, the following happy words from Augustine, which, we may be sure, he translated into fact in his Newbattle study: "Oratio postulet, lectio inquirat, meditatio inveniat, contemplatio degustet et digerat." Such commentators as Heinsius, Mayer, Erasmus, Beza, Schotan, Capellus, and Calvin, which are to this day on the shelves of his Library, doubtless received his attention. But he was debtor to Greek and Barbarian, to Heathen and Christian, and, like the bee, extracted honey from every flower. He found materials for

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illustration in every book he read, Classic or Christian Father, in Aurelius or Augustine. Now his thought took its tinge from an ode of George Herbert, or a saying of Seneca, or Francis de Sales, or Sir Thomas Browne, or Sir Thomas More, or Dr. Henry More. He quoted Cicero and Horace, and Ovid and Virgil, just as he quoted Ambrose or Jerome, Thomas à Kempis or Thomas Aquinas. He had bosom friends in St. Bernard and St. Gregory, but he also entertained the great poets and philosophers and historians of Greece and Rome, and gathered wisdom from converse with Sophocles and Euripides, Plato and Aristotle, Xenophon and Plutarch, Julius Cæsar and Epictetus. He found side-lights in antiquity, in medievalism, in the Reformers and Neo-Platonists; Plotinus and Salvianus, Erasmus and Luther, Drexelius and De Serres, Bacon and Bayly, were there with a gift to be laid on the altar. In this, as in some other respects, he was a true son of Alexander Leighton, whose two books, Sion's Plea, and The Looking-glass of the Holy War, are crammed with choice morsels from all literature.

The Commentary, after the lapse of nearly two centuries, is the best that has been produced. Dr. John Brown, in his "Expository Discourses" on the same Epistle, makes seventy distinct quotations from Leighton; and characterises him as teaching a singularly pure and complete theology, a theology thoroughly evangelical, in the true sense of that often abused epithet, being equally free from legalism and antinomianism; in a spirit of enlightened and affectionate devotion, love to the brotherhood and charity to all men ; and in a style which, though very unequal, indicates in its general structure a familiarity with the classic models of antiquity, and in occasional expressions is in the highest degree felicitous and beautiful." In connection with the saintly John Brown, who loved Leighton so deeply, we cannot refrain from quoting the wise words of his son, the late and loved John Brown, M.D., as, in great measure,

fitly appropriate to Leighton: "With devotional feeling, with everything that showed reverence and godly fear, he cordialised wherever and in whomsoever it was found, Pagan or Christian, Romanist or Protestant, bond or free: and, while he disliked, and had indeed a positive antipathy to intellectual mysticism, he had a great knowledge and relish for such writers as Dr. Henry More, Culverwel, Scougall, Madame Guyon, whom (besides their other qualities) I may perhaps be allowed to call affectionate mystics; and for such poets as Herbert and Vaughan, whose poetry was pious, and their piety poetic."1 Coleridge, who called the Commentary "the reverberations of Peter's strokes," has culled many aphorisms from it, and from other writings of Leighton, in his Aids to Reflection, and thereby aided in perpetuating the reverberations. The first edition appeared in two parts, the first at York in 1693, and the second at London in 1694, under the editorship of Dr. Fall, who informs "the pious reader" that the "Sermons," which appeared in 1692, had received such general acceptance that the bookseller was under the necessity" to make a second edition." Such acceptance had induced the good Doctor to "offer the following meditations of this primitively devout author upon the first two chapters of the first Epistle General of St. Peter." The Latin Discourses were by that time also in the press. It is from the first edition we make our selections, with the first editor's wish made our own, "that the author's design in preaching these Discourses, and the editor's in publishing them, that they might make wise the simple and convert the soul," may be attained. "Paul may plant, and Apollos may water, but God giveth the increase, which that it may be in that abundance which shall make both planters and waterers rejoice in that great and last harvest, is and shall be the fervent prayer of the Publisher, J. F."

1 Letter to Dr. Cairns regarding Rev. Dr. John Brown.

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The First Sentence of the Commentary.

The grace of God in the heart of man is a tender plant in a strange unkindly soil, and therefore cannot well prosper and grow without much care and pains, and that of a skilful hand, and that hath the art of cherishing it; for this end God hath given the constant ministry of the Word to His church, not only for the first work of conversion, but also for confirming and increasing of His grace in the hearts of His children.

The Apostle Peter.

By that which is spoken of him in divers passages of the Gospel, he is very remarkable amongst the Apostles, both for his graces and his failings; eminent in zeal and courage, and yet stumbling oft in his forwardness, and once grossly falling; and these, by the providence of God, being recorded in Scripture, give a check to the excess of Rome's conceit concerning this Apostle. Their extolling and exalting him above the rest, is not for his cause, and much less to the honour of his Lord and Master Jesus Christ, for He is injured and dishonoured by it; but 'tis in favour of themselves, as Alexander distinguished his two friends that the one was a friend of Alexander, the other a friend of the king. That preferment they give

this Apostle is not in goodwill to Peter, but in the desire of Primacy. But whatsoever he was, they would be much in pain to prove Rome's right to it by succession. And if ever it had any such right, we may confidently say, it has forfeited it long ago by departing from St. Peter's footsteps, and from his faith, and retaining too much those things wherein he was faulty, namely :

His unwillingness to hear of and consent to Christ's sufferings, his Master, spare thyself, or Far be it from thee, in those they are like him; for thus they would disburden and exempt the church from the Cross, from the real cross of afflictions; and instead of that have nothing but painted, or carved, or gilded crosses; these they are content to embrace, and worship too, but cannot endure to hear of the other. Instead of the cross of affliction they make the Crown or Mitre the badge of their church, and will have it known by prosperity, and outward pomp, and so turn the church militant into the church triumphant, not considering that it is Babylon's voice, not the church's, I sit as a queen and shall see no sorrow.

Again, his saying on the Mount at Christ's Transfiguration, when he knew not what he said, It is good to be here; so they have little of the true glory of Christ, but the false glory of that monarchy