Leighton on First Peter 4:4

Robert Leighton was born in London in 1611, studied at Edinburgh University, and eventually became archbishop of Glasgow in 1670 before retiring and going back to London (he died 1684). I confess I'd never heard of him until someone recommended his commentary on First Peter - and I also confess it's the first time I've ever tried to read a commentary. It's slow going, because of the huge amount of detailed exposition on each phrase of each verse ... that's just what you'd expect from a commentary of course, but it doesn't make for easy reading.

So, to clear my head from all those stressful political rants, here are two excerpts. I'm posting them in reverse chronological order so that you can read them consecutively in small chunks ... never mind. I'm clearly taking this far too seriously.

Anyway, the first is an interesting observation on the phrase in chapter 4, verse 4, where Peter says that unconverted people think it strange that believers don't run with them to the same excess of reckless self-abandon. It was written obviously some time in the seventeenth century, so I've taken the liberty of making some changes in the wording, hopefully to make it more readable ... I don't normally like silent editing, but I'm going to break my own rule this time.

"The Christian and the unconverted person are most wonderful to each other. The one wonders to see the other walk so strictly, and deny himself to those worldly liberties which the majority take, and take for so necessary that they think they could not live without them. And the Christian thinks it strange that people should be so bewitched, ... wearying and humouring themselves from morning to night, always busy doing nothing; he wonders that the delights of earth and sin can entertain and please them for so long, and persuade them to give Jesus Christ so many refusals - can persuade them to turn from what would be their life and happiness, and choose to be miserable: indeed, to go to such lengths to make themselves miserable. The Christian knows the depravedness and blindness of nature in this; he knows it by himself, that he was once the same, and therefore he wonders not so much at them as they do at him; yet the unreasonableness and frenzy of that course of conduct appears to him now in so strong a light that he cannot but wonder at these woeful mistakes." [from p402-403]