Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?
Ver. 5. Examine yourselves] The final trial of our eternal estate doth immediately and solely appertain to the court of heaven. Indeed the disquisitive part belongs to us, the decisive to God.
Prove your own selves] Redouble your diligence in this most needful but much neglected duty of self-examination; an error here is easy and dangerous; hence the precept is doubled; so Zephaniah 2:1. Excutite vos, iterumque excutite, as Tremellius renders it, Fan yourselves, yea, fan yourselves. He doubleth his phrase, as it were his files. Men are as loth to review their actions, and read the blurred writing of their hearts, as school boys are to parse their lessons and false Latins they have made; the eyes also of their minds are as ill set as those of their bodies, so that they see nothing inwards, though these windows of the soul should be like the windows of Solomon's temple, broad inward, 1 Kings 6:4 : and men should try themselves thoroughly, for God will; as, though scholars will not scan their verses, their master will. "Let every man therefore prove his own work,"Galatians 6:4; so shall he save God a labour, and put the devil out of office. Whereas, sparing a little pains at first doubleth it in the end, as he that will not cast up his books, his books will cast up him at length.
Know ye not your own selves?] Nosce teipsum, Know thyself, say the heathens, came down from heaven; sure it is none can ascend to heaven unless he know himself.
Except ye be reprobates?] Gr. counterfeits, adulterine. Every soul is either the spouse of Christ, or the devil's strumpet.