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Our apostle here directs Timothy how to manage rightly that great and important duty of ministerial reproof: if aged persons, elders in age, do transgress, they must be rebuked, not magisterially, but fraternally, with humility and gentleness, according to their years; not with austerity and roughness. The elder men as fathers, the elder women as mothers, both with just deference and due respect: the younger also must not be treated with contempt, but with gentleness; The younger men as brethern, the younger women as sisters, both without pride and fierceness: and with all purity, shunning all levity and wantonness, and eschewing all that savoureth of immodesty or unchastity in thought, speech, look, or behaviour.
Learn hence, That although the ministers of God must not flatter or favour any persons, to the prejudice either of truth or holiness, yet must they put a difference between persons in their reproof; they must not deal with the aged as they deal with the younger, (when we speak reproof, we must also speak respect to the ancient spiritual fathers,) no more that natural children must behave themselves proudly against the ancient, and basely against the honourable.