If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, whereunto thou hast attained.
Ver. 6. Nourished up in the words] Such are fittest to be made ministers as have been well bred, and inured to the reading of the Scriptures; as have sucked in holy learning together with their mother's milk. Quintilian adviseth that the child that is intended for an orator, should from two or three years old be accustomed to hear and babble out good language, the best words and best pronounced. Quanto id in Theologo futuro expetendum curandumque magis, &c.? saith Amama; how much more needeth such care and pains be taken with the child that is dedicated to the ministry, that he may become (as Quintilian saith an orator should be) vir bonus dicendi peritus, a good man and well able to deliver himself in good terms. I have known some (saith Peach) for their judgment in arts and tongues very sufficient; yet to have heard their discourse (so defective were they in their own tongue) you would have thought you had heard Loy talking to his pigs, or Johannes de Indagine declaiming in the praise of wild geese. Of Matthew Doringus, a Popish commentator, Steuchus (a Papist too) saith truly, that he is not worthy to be named ob universam V. T. scripturam foedissima barbarie conspurcatam, for defiling all the Old Testament with his base barbarisms, as the harpies did the good meat they seized on.
a Gr. and Lat. Myth. A fabulous monster, rapacious and filthy, having a woman's face and body and a bird's wings and claws, and supposed to act as a minister of divine vengeance. A type of eagle. ŒD