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Ver. 5,6 Now the end of the commandment is charity: the word translated commandment here is paraggelia, which rather signifies a particular charge given by superiors as to some thing, than a general law, Act_5:28 16:24; and so in this chapter, 1Ti_1:18; which inclineth me to think, that though the proposition be true of the whole law of God, (for love is the fulfilling of the law), and more eminently of the Divine doctrine in the gospel, for the end and perfection it aims at and produces is a pure, ardent love of God, and of men for his sake, and of the gospel, yet it is rather here to be restrained to the commandment relating to preaching, or discoursing the revealed will of God relating to men’s salvation, the end of which is doubtless charity, which ought to be finis operantis, the end of the workman, what he ought to intend and aim at; and is finis operis, the effect of the work, viz. the begetting in the souls of people love to God and their neighbour, neither of which can rationally be obtained by preachers telling people idle stories, and filling their heads with idle questions and speculations.
Out of a pure heart: which love to God and men must proceed from a clean, and holy, and sincere heart.
And of a good conscience; and a good and holy life, when conscience doth not sourly reflect upon men for presumptuous miscarriages.
And of faith unfeigned; which must all be rooted in and attended with a faith unfeigned; rooted in it, as faith signifies a steady assent to Divine revelation; attended with it, as it signifies the soul’s repose and rest upon Christ for the fulfilling of the promises annexed to him that believes and liveth up to such propositions. These are the noble ends of the whole law of God, and particularly of the charge or command God hath given ministers as to preaching, which can by no means be attained by teachers’ discoursing fables and endless genealogies to people, nor by people’s attendance to such discourses, for they can only fill people’s heads with notions and unprofitable questions, which serve to gender strife and contention amongst people, instead of love either to God or men, and so to defile instead of purifying the heart, and have no influence at all upon a holy life, all which can grow out of no root but an unfeigned faith.
From which; from which things (for the article is plural, wn); from which commandment, and from the end of which commandment, from which pure heart, good conscience, and faith unfeigned.
Some having swerved: astochsantev, the word signifies to wander from a scope or mark. Some men either propounding to themselves ends in their discourses to people different from the command concerning preaching, and the true end of that, or at least wandering from that true end, they have turned aside. To do an action well, two things are necessary:
1. The propounding to ourselves a right end;
2. A moving to it by due means and in right order: whoso faileth in either of these, can no more do an action well, than he can shoot an arrow well, that either eyeth no mark, or levelleth his arrow quite beside it.
The preachers reflected on by the apostle, either never considered the true end of preaching, or never regarded it in their action; this made them turn aside from theology to mataeology, from preaching to vain jangling; so we translate it, but the word signifieth foolish talking; so we translate the adjective: Tit_1:10, and so the word properly signifieth, any kind of foolish, impertinent discourse, either serving to no good end, or at least not that which the discourse pretendeth to. And indeed all discourses of fables, and unprofitable, idle questions, tending not to edifying, is no better than foolish talking.