EPISTLE TO THE EPliEfclANS. l^ii 



own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord Husbands, love your 

 wives, and be not bitter against them Children, obey your 

 parents in all things ; for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. 

 Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be 

 discouraged. Servants, obey in all things your masters 

 according tc the flesh : not wdth eye-service, as men-pleas- 

 ers ; but in singleness of heart, fearing God : and whatsoever 

 ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men : 

 knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the 

 inheritance ; for ye serve the Lord Christ. But he that 

 doeth wrong, shall receive for the wrong which he hath 

 done ; and there is no respect of persons. Masters, give un- 

 to your servants that which is just and equal ; knowing that 

 ye also have a Master in heaven." 



The passages marked by italics in the quotation from the 

 Ephesians, bear a strict resemblance, not only in significa- 

 tion, but in terms, to the quotation from the Colossians. 

 Both the words and the order of the words are, in many 

 clauses, a duplicate of one another. In the epistle to ihi 

 Colossians, these passages are laid together ; in that to the 

 Ephesians, they are divided by intermediate matter, espec- 

 ially by a long digressive allusion to the mysterious union 

 between Christ and his church ; which possessing, as Mr. 

 Locke has well observed, the mind of the apostle, from being 

 an incidental thought, grows up into the principal subject. 

 The affinity between these two passages in signification, in 

 terms, and in the order of the words, is closer than can be point- 

 ed out between any parts of any two epistles in the volume. 



If the reader would see how the same subject is treated 

 by a difierent hand, and how distinguishable it is from the 

 production of the same pen, let him turn to the second and 

 third chapters of the first epistle of St. Peter. The duties 

 of &3rvants, of wives, and of husbands, are enlarged upon in 

 that epistle, as they are in the epistle to the Ephesians ; but 

 the subjects both occur in a difierent order, and the train oi 

 sentiment subjoined to each is totally unlike. 



