[1]It is indeed the basis of the exhortation of verse 6. When the faith of so many is giving~ way, he turns to the personal confidence which his heart had in Timothy, nourished up through grace by the atmosphere he had lived in.

[2]Hence also it is said (l John 5), " the Spirit is truth."

[3]This is true as regards guilt. But God, being perfectly revealed, and that in grace as the Father and the Son, our apprehension of the ruin in which we are, goes deeper fart than the sense of guilt as the breach of previously existing relationships. We were guilty according to our place as men. But we were "atheos", without God in the world, and (when God is known) this is awful. The beginning of Romans treats the question of guilt; Ephesians 2, the sate we were in; John 5:24 briefly resumes grace as to both. The relationship now is an entirely new one, founded on purpose, redemption, and our being children of God.

[4]The doctrines or dogmas of scripture have their importance and their adaptation to the simplest soul in this, that they are facts, and so objects of faith, not notions. Thus Christ is God, Christ is man, the Holy Ghost is a Person, and the like, are facts for faith realized in the simplest soul.

[5]Read "laboring first."

[6]This, while a profound source of comfort, is a proof of decline; for men ought to know who are the Lord's too. It is not, "The Lord added daily to the assembly such as should be saved."

[7]We get the difference of the state of things in this case also., It is not all Christians who will be persecuted, but all who will live godly in Christ Jesus.

[8]This too is the real sense of Romans 16:26, where we should read, "by prophetic writings.