Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy.
Ver. 1. Follow after charity] Διωκετε, follow it hot-foot, as they say; pursue and practise it. It is more than to desire or to be zealous of a thing, as it follows in the next words, Ζηλουτε, "Be zealous of spiritual gifts." Follow charity close, as the hunter doth his prey, or as the persecutor doth the martyr, that will hide or escape if he can. Charity may be fitly compared to the precious stone Pantarb, spoken of by Philostratus; a stone of great beauty and of strange property; so bright it is and radiant, that it gives light in the darkest midnight; and that light is of that admirable virtue, that it brings together the stones that it reacheth into heaps, as if they were so many hives of bees; but nature, lest so precious a gift should be undervalued, hath not only hid this stone in the secret bowels of the earth, but hath also put into it a property of slipping out of the hands of those that hold it, Nisi provida ratione teneatur, unless they hold it fast indeed.