For bills and obligations do mancipate the most free and ingenuous spirit, and so put a man out of aim that he can neither serve God without distraction nor do good to others, nor set his own state in any good order, but lives and dies entangled and puzzled with cares and snares; and after a tedious and labourious life passed in a circle of fretting thoughts, he leaves at last, instead of better patrimony, a world of intricate troubles to his posterity, who are also taken "with the words of his mouth."--_Trapp._ Verse 3. This appeal is not, obviously, to the bond-giver, who has seduced us to endorse him, and is as helpless as we to get anybody off; but the bond-holder, for a securityship is to beg off in the most unspeakable abjectness, and to press and to urge the credit to release our name. Now, I say, this is not _simpliciter_, the gist of the inspiration. But if we introduce the Gospel; if we see in this a great picture of our guilt; if we see in the bond-holder the Friend to whom we are to appeal; if we see in the bond-giver sin in all the seductive forms in which it has come down to us from the original transgressor; if the grip of the suretyship is the law, and the form of the law is the broken covenant; if the act of our "striking hands" is the way we have accepted the curse of Adam, and the way we have volunteered under this _stranger's_ burdens, then the whole passage becomes complete, and we are ready for the appeal, "Go, humble thyself," &c. That is the very Gospel.--_Miller._ St. Gregory, Bede, and other ancient expositors, apply these injunctions in a spiritual sense. "To be a surety for a friend is to take upon thee the charge of looking to another's soul," says St. Gregory, who also, reading the latter clause of the verse in the sense of _"urging"_ and _"importuning"_ (see Critical Notes), explains it thus: "Whosoever is set before others for an example of their living is admonished, not only to watch himself, but to rouse up his friend: for it sufficeth not that he doth watch well, if he do not rouse him also over whom he is set from the drowsiness of sin." Verse 4. Has this precept any connection with our spiritual interests? It has. It is a part of the eighth commandment, and though men regard it rather as a loss than as a sin to endanger their outward estate, it is both a sin and a temptation. Men who once seemed upright in their dealings have brought reproach upon religion by living and dying in other men's debt, and by having recourse to unjustifiable methods, suggested by distress, to relieve themselves. The effect of suretyship, even with the most upright men, has often proved hurtful to their souls, embittering their days, and unfitting them for the cheerful service of religion. We are the servants of Christ, and must not disqualify ourselves for His service by making ourselves needlessly the servants of men.--_Lawson._