4:1 From 1 whence [come] wars and fightings among you? [come
they] not hence, [even] of your lusts that war in your
members?
(1) He advances the same argument, condemning certain other
causes of wars and contentions, that is, unbridled
pleasures and uncontrolled lusts, by their effects, for
so much as the Lord does worthily make them come to no
effect, so that they bring nothing to them in whom they
reside, but incurable torments.
4:2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and
cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, 2
because ye ask not.
(2) He reprehends them by name, who are not ashamed to make God
the minister and helper of their lusts and pleasures, in
asking things which are either in themselves unlawful or
being lawful, ask for them out of wicked motives and uses.
4:43 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the
friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever
therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
(3) Another reason why such unbridled lusts and pleasures are
utterly to be condemned, that is, because he who gives
himself to the world divorces himself from God, and breaks
the band of that holy and spiritual marriage.
4:54 Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit
that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?
(4) The taking away of an objection: in deed our minds run
headlong into these vices, but we ought so much the more
diligently take heed of them: whose care and study shall
not be in vain, seeing that God resists the stubborn and
gives the grace to the modest and humble that surmounts all
those vices.
4:75 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil,
and he will flee from you.
(5) The conclusion: We must set the positive virtues against
those vices, and therefore whereas we obeyed the
suggestions of the devil, we must submit our minds to God
and resist the devil with a certain and assured hope of
victory. In short, we must endeavour to come near to God by
purity and sincerity of life.
4:96 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be
turned to mourning, and [your] joy to a heaviness.
(6) He goes on in the same comparison of opposites, and
contrasts those profane joys with an earnest sorrow of
mind, and pride and arrogancy with holy modesty.
(a) By this word the Greeks mean a heaviness joined with
shamefacedness, which is to be seen in a cast down
countenance, and settled as it were upon the ground.
4:117 Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that
speaketh evil of [his] brother, and judgeth his brother,
speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou
judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge.
(7) He reprehends most sharply another double mischief of
pride. The one is, in that the proud and arrogant will have
other men to live according to their will and pleasure.
Therefore they do most arrogantly condemn whatever does not
please them: which cannot be done without great injury to
our only lawmaker. For through this his laws are found
fault with, as not carefully enough written, and men
challenge that to themselves which properly belongs to God
alone, in that they lay a law upon men's consciences.
4:138 Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go
into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and
sell, and get gain:
(8) The other fault is this: That men do so confidently
determine on these and those matters and businesses, as
though every moment of their life did not depend on God.
4:179 Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth
[it] not, to him it is sin.
(9) The conclusion of all the former treatise. The knowledge
of the will of God does not only not at all profit, unless
the life be answerable unto it, but also makes the sins far
more grievous.
