My heart is with you though I am absent, as to my bodily presence from you, and therefore as I have often already, so I have now written to you to stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance, and to call upon you for your steadfast continuing, and vigorous proceeding in the ways of God. Dear friends and fellow soldiers under Christ, the Captain of our salvation, consider your calling and station, and approve yourselves as good soldiers of Jesus Christ, as men of resolution and courage, be discouraged with no difficulties of your present warfare. As for human affairs, I would have you to be as you are, men of peace: I would have you armed not for resisting, God forbid, but for suffering only, as the Apostle hints: you should resist, even to the uttermost, striving against sin.
The Apostle Paul assures us that all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. There seems to be a necessary connection between godliness and persecution. There is an enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. In the words of the text, persecution appears to be one of the great tribulations through which they pass. They all suffer persecution in some shape or other.
Much honoured and very dear Sir, I do by this line salute much in the Lord yourself and your worthy yokefellow and companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, whom he is graciously pleased to keep yet together when he hath made many sad separations and divorces between other husbands and wives, partly by violent, partly by natural deaths, which I know mightily alarms and provokes you to more than ordinary and more than ever diligent, careful, and conscionable improvement of one another’s fellowship, to the best spiritual advantage.
"O God, the proud are risen against me, and the assemblies of violent men have sought after my soul, and have not set thee before them" (Psalm 86:14). The present condition and state of this our time lets us see what need we have to understand the meaning of these words, for our instruction and comfort. For as the Prophet, David, when he penned this Psalm, was persecuted by powerful and malicious enemies, from whose rage and fury he prays to God for deliverance, so we being threatened by the like hostile invasion, have need to crave by humble supplication the Lord’s gracious and favourable protection.
