Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins.
Ver. 12. Hatred stirreth up strifes.] Especially when hatred is grown from a passion to a habit, which is, when the heart is so settled in an alienation and estrangement from the person hated, that it grows to wish, and desire, and seek his hurt. I could like that exposition well if it were not Calvin's, said Maldonat; and that reformed religion, if Luther had not had a hand in it, said George Duke of Saxony.
But love covereth all sins.] See Trapp on " 1Pe 4:8 " See Trapp on " 1Co 13:4 " Love hath a large mantle. If I should find a bishop commitring adultery, said Constantine the Great, I would cover that foul fact with mine imperial robe rather than it should come abroad to the scandal of the weak and the scorn of the wicked. a Love either dissembleth a trespass, if it be light, or by a wise and gentle reproof seeks to reclaim the offender, claps a plaster on the sore, and then covers it with her hand, as we have seen chirurgeons do. See Trapp on " Lev 19:17 " Lutherus commodius sentit quam loquitur, dum effervescit, said Cruciger. So Melanchthon, Sciebam horridius scripturum Lutherum quam sentit. The sayings, doings of others, are reverenter glossanda, to have a reverent, a fair, and favourable gloss put upon them, as one said once of the pontifician laws. This is love.
a Eusebius.