Matthew 4:21

21 And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them.

Ver. 21. He saw other two brethren, James, &c.] Three pair of brethren, at least, our Saviour called to the apostleship; to show what brotherly love should be found among ministers, what agreement in judgment and affection. There the Lord commands the blessing, and life for evermore, Psa 133:3. As where envying and strife is, there is confusion, and every evil work, Jas 3:16. Hence the devil laboureth (all he can) to set ministers at variance, and to sow dissension among them (as between Paul and Barnabas), that the work may be hindered. Divide et impera, make division, and so get dominion, was a maxim of Machiavel, which he learnt of the devil. What woeful tragedies hath he raised of late between the Lutherans and Zuinglians! What comedies have the Papists composed out of the Church’s tragedies! To foster the faction, they joined themselves to the Lutherans in that sacramentary quarrel. They commended them, made much of them, and almost pardoned them all that loss they had sustained by them. ( Eos excusabant, in pretio habebant, ac tantum non ignoscebant iis. Scultet.) This, that holy man of God, Oecolampadius, bitterly bewaileth in a letter to the Lutherans of Suevia. The error, saith he, may be pardoned through faith in Christ, but the discord we cannot expiate with the dearest and warmest blood in our hearts. ( Error condonari potest, modo fides adsit in Christum; discordiam, neque si sanguinem fundamus, expiabimus.) They, on the other side (in their syngram or answer), handled that most innocent man so coarsely, ut non obiurgatione, sed execratione dignum sit, saith Zuinglius, that they deserved not to be confuted, but to be abhorred by all men. This was as good sport to the Papists as the jars between Abraham and Lot were to the Amorites. But that one consideration (that we are brethren) should conjure down all disagreements (as between them) and make us unite against a common adversary. The Low Countrymen, suspecting the English (A.D. 1587), stamped money with two earthen pots swimming in the sea (according to the old fable), and wittily inscribed, Si collidimur, frangimur, If we clash we are broken. The Thracians, had they been all of one mind, had been invincible, saith Herodotus. And Cornelius Tacitus (who had been here in Brittany with his father-in-law Agricola) reporteth of our forefathers that they fell into the hands of the Romans by nothing so much as by their dissensions among themselves. Rarus duabus tribusve civitatibus conventus. Ita dum singuli pugnant, universi vincuntur. (Tacitus.) Pliny telleth of the stone Thyrraeus, that, though never so large, while it is whole, it floateth upon the waters; but being broken, it sinketh. And who hath not read of Silurus’s bundle of arrows? To break unity is to cut asunder the very veins and sinews of the mystical body of Christ, as the apostle intimateth, 1Co 1:10; (κατηρτισμενοι), to hinder all true growth in godliness, Eph 4:16, and inward comfort, Php 2:1, to drive away God, who appeared not to Abraham till the difference was made up, Gen 13:14, &c., and to outdo ourselves ( Praesente Loto, et vigente contentione, Deus non apparuit. Par. in loc.): as the dragon sucketh out the blood of the elephant, and the weight of the falling elephant oppresseth the dragon, and so both perish together. (Plin. lib. 8, c. 12.) To prevent all which, and to compose all quarrels in this Egypt of the world, let it be remembered, as Moses told the two striving Israelites, that we are brethren. And oh how good and how pleasant it is for brethren (in the ministry especially) to dwell together in unity, Psa 133:1.