For I fear, lest, when I come, I shall not find you such as I would, and that I shall be found unto you such as ye would not: lest there be debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults:
Ver. 20. And that I shall be found] Crudelem medicum intemperans aeger facit. The sick man makes harsh headstrong medicine, (Mimus.) We delight not to fling daggers at men's faces; but if men be not told their own, and that with some sharpness, they will on in sin to their utter ruin. Sharp waters clear the eyesight; and bitter potions bring on sweet health. A weak dose doth but stir bad humours and anger them, not purge them out; so it fareth with sins.
Lest there be debates, envyings, &c.] King Edward IV, the night before his death, said to his kinsmen and friends, I remember it to my grief, that there hath been discord among you a great time, not always for great causes, but poor mistakings, a Some, like salamanders, live always in the fire; like trouts, they love to swim against stream; like Phocion, they think it a goodly thing to dissent from others.
Whisperings] See Trapp on " Rom 1:29 "
Swellings] That is, taking things unkindly, so that the heart even riseth against another, and we cannot away with him, would have nothing to do with him. Now, as the swelling of the spleen is very dangerous for health; and of the sails, for the overbearing of a little vessel; so is this swelling of the heart by passion, especially if it break out at the lips by tumults, that is, by telling this body, running to that, filling the town with it. Caelum mugitibus implet.
a Daniel's Hist. of England.