My son, keep my words, and lay up my commandments with thee.
Ver. 1. My son, keep my words.] Aristotle hath observed, and daily experience makes it good, that man shows his weakness no way more than about moderating the pleasure ef his tasting and touching, forasmuch as they belong to him, not as a man, but as a living creature. Now therefore as where the hedge is lowest, there the beast leaps over soonest, so Satan will be sure to assault us where we are least able to withstand him. And whereas old men a have no cause to be secure - (David was old when he went in to Bathsheba, and Lot not young when he deflowered his two daughters; - of the Brabonts it is said, that quo magis senescunt eo magis stultescunt, The older the more foolish; and the heathen sages say, Metuendam esse senectam, quod non veniat sola, that old age is to be feared, as that which comes not alone, but being itself a disease, it comes accompanied with many diseases both of body and mind); - young men b especially, whom the Greeks call ηιθεοι of αθω, to be hot, and Aιζηοι of Zεω, to boil, and who think they have a licence helluari, scortari, fores effringere, to drink and drab, which they count and call a trick of youth, have but more than need to be constantly and carefully cautioned and called upon, as here they are, to "flee fornication," 1Co 6:8 to "flee youthful lusts," 2Ti 2:22 with posthaste to flee them, to "abstain from fleshly lusts" tanquam a mellito veneno, "which war against the soul." 1Pe 2:11 The body cannot be so wounded with weapons as the soul is with lusts. Holy Timothy - so temperate a young man that St Paul was fain to prescribe him medicine, bidding him no longer to drink water, but "a little wine for his stomach's sake and his often infirmities," 1Ti 5:23 contracted happily by his too much abstinence, for the better keeping under his body, and bringing it into subjection - is in the same chapter by the same apostle exhorted to exhort the younger women with all purity; 1Ti 5:2 whereby is intimated, that through the deceit of his heart, and the slipperiness of his age, even while he was pressing those young women to purity, some impure motion might press in upon him; which, though but a stranger to Timothy - as Peter Martyr and others observe out of that passage in Nathan's parable, 2Sa 12:5 that lust was to David - yet might prove a troublesome inmate if not suddenly ejected. It is no marvel, therefore, that the wise man is so exceedingly earnest with his son about the business of abhorring harlotry, the hatefulness whereof he now paints out in a parable, setting it forth in liveliest colours.
a Turpe est senescere aetatem, non tamen senescere lasciviam. - Nazianz.
b Contra πρεσβυτηρ α πυρ et σβεω : et senex quasi seminex.