17 These things I command you, that ye love one another.



Ver. 17. That ye love one another] That ye hold together, because the world will hate you. A spirit of perversities made way for the ruin of Egypt, Isa_19:14; Isa_19:16-17. Si collidimur frangimur, if we clash we break. Of the ancient Britons, Tacitus tells us that nothing was so destructory to them as their dissensions, Dum singuli pugnant universi vincuntur. And of the Thracians, Herodotus saith, that if they had been all of one mind they had been invincible. Keep therefore the staff of binders unbroken, Zec_11:7; Zec_11:14 "Keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace," Eph_4:3. In the cause of religion every subdivision is a strong weapon in the hand of the enemy; as in the disagreement of Luther and Zuinglius. The Jesuits have a practice of running over to the Lutherans, pretending to be converts; but it is only to keep up that bitter contention that is between the Calvinists and Lutherans; the virulence whereof is much fomented by these renegade Jesuits.