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Unto fathers, because to such belong much experience, and the knowledge of ancient things, he ascribeth the knowledge of
him who is the Ancient of days, from the beginning, and than whom none is more ancient, and whom they should be supposed so well to know by their long continued course in religion, as fully to understand his good and acceptable will, what would be pleasing and what displeasing to him.
I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one: to such as were in the flower of their strength and age in Christianity, he attributeth victory; to whom therefore it would be inglorious to slur the honour of that noble conquest they had gained over
the wicked one, the god of this world, as he is elsewhere called, 2Co_4:4, by suffering themselves again to be entangled in its snares and bands. His method is, we see, to place this order of Christians last, as a middle state, which he would have us conceive afterwards to be interposed between the other two; which method we find he observes in going over them again the second time.
I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father: he again first begins with his little children, whom he now bespeaks by another compellation in the Greek, (before teknia, now paidia), importing no material difference, except this latter signify more capacity of instruction; and he now also gives them another character, which implies so much, that he not only considers them as the passive subjects of a privilege, remission of sins, which they were capable of in the first moment of their being born into the Christian state, (as the word teknia, above, seems to intimate), but as being able to use their understanding, and consider whose children they were,
because ye have known the Father; before said also of the eldest sort of Christians; but he is there mentioned by a description more suitable to their more aged state; and therefore the knowledge ascribed to the one, and to the other, though the same in kind, must, in respect of degrees, be accommodately understood.