John 1:17 For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. One of the persecutors, in Queen Mary's days, pursuing a poor Protestant, and searching the house for him, charged an old woman to show him the heretic. She points to a great chest of linen, on the top whereof lay a fair looking-glass. He opens the chest, and asks where the heretic was. She suddenly replied, "Do you not see one? meaning that he was the heretic, and that he might easily see himself in the glass. And thus God's law is the glass that shows us all our spots. Let us hold it right to our intellectual eye; not behind us, as the wicked do, they cast God's word behind them; not beside us, like the rich worldling that called to Christ — not to turn the back of the glass towards us, which is the very trick of all hypocrites; nor, lastly, to look upon ourselves in this glass when we are muffled, masked, or cased, for under those veils we cannot discern our own complexions. But let us see the clear glass before our face, and our open face to the glass, and then we shall soon perceive that the sight of our filthiness is the first step towards cleanliness. (J. Spencer.) Parallel Verses KJV: For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.WEB: For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. |
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