ditional assembly (episynagogam) as Christians: and yet we are not to understand this expression as if it exclusively applied to assembling in one place, or to associating for promoting one faith ; but it should be taken in a middle sense, as the mutual meeting together in love, and as the public and private inter change of Christian duties, in which brother does not withdraw himself from brother, but one stimulates the other, and is stimu lated by the other. For even spiritual warmth and ardour separate things that are heterogeneous, and bring together those that are homogeneous. This interpretation affords all that seems necessary for the order of the discourse, in which, next to faith towards GOD, love to the saints is commended ; and all that is necessary for explaining the verbal substantive !-7r/<ruvayw- vqv, and the fact that it is in the singular number ; and for ex plaining the pronoun, which is savruv, of ourselves, not our ; and for explaining the complaint, as the manner of some is; and for ex plaining the antithesis, exhorting. — r/<r/v, some) who were perhaps afraid of the Jews. — crapaxaXouvrsg, exhorting) The power of ex horting, which is required, includes the peculiar ardour of every individual. — xal rotiovru yaa?«.Xov, and so much the more) This refers to the whole exhortation from ver. 22 : comp. ver. 37. — ftXsvsre, ye see) from the signs of the times, and from the very sacrifice for sin having been perfected : ver. 13. — r^ tip'spav, the day) the day of Christ. After Christ had come in the flesh, who was the object of expectation during so many ages of the world, His glorious coming is thought to be now immediately at hand ; comp. ver. 27, 30, 35, etc.
26. 'Exoutf/ws, wilfully) For after the truth has been acknow ledged, the excuse of ignorance is taken away. — a^aprav&vrwv, if we sin) To sin here means entire revolt or apostasy from GOD, ver. 29, ch. iii. 12, 2 Kings xxi. 16 ; and the violation, not of the law, ver. 28, but of the whole economy of the New Testa- ment, ver. 29. Comp. a^T^ag, rejected, despised, ver. 28, note. — /xsra rb Xa/3g/v, after we have received) This does not so much refer to individuals as to the state of believers of the New Testament : whence, however, the conclusion holds good to indi viduals, ver. 29. — r^g aXyfaias, of the truth) The truth, here, and grace, ver. 29, are expressions applied to the New Testament. The Spirit of grace, ibid., is called the Spirit of truth in John