Romans 12:12

Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer;

Ver. 12. Rejoicing in hope] Hope makes absent joys present, wants, plenitudes, and beguiles calamity as good company doth the time. But without hope, patience is cold almost in the fourth degree, and that is but a little from poison. It was a dotage of the Stoics, that a wise man should be free, as from fear, so from hope too. How much better the Elpistici, another sort of philosophers, who held hope to be the only stay and staff of man's life, without which to live were but to lie dying! This life would be little better than hell, saith Bernard, were it not for the hopes of heaven. Sed superest sperare salutem, and this holds head above water, this keeps the heart aloft all floods of afflictions, as the cork doth the line, as bladders do the body in swimming. Ibat ovans animis et spe sua damna levabat, He was going with a rejoicing spirit and hope of being released from his corruptions, saith Bembus concerning St Stephen going to his death. (Vivere spe vidi qui moriturus erat. Ovid.) I look to live by hope who was about to die. He that seeth visions of glory, and hath sure hopes of heaven, will not matter a shower of stones; he that is to take possession of a kingdom will not stand upon a foul day. Hope unfailable is grounded upon faith unfeigned, which is seldom without its joy unspeakable and full of glory, 1 Peter 1:8 .

Patient in tribulation] Bearing up under pressures, as among many other martyrs Nicholas Burton, who by the way to the stake, and in the flame, was so patient and cheerful, that the tormentors said, the devil had his soul before he came to the fire, and therefore his senses of feeling were past. (Acts and Mon.)

Continuing instant in prayer] Constant and instant, προσκαρτερουντες. A metaphor from hunting dogs, that give not over the game till they have got it. Nazianzen saith of his sister Gorgonia, that she was so given to prayer, that her knees seemed to grow to the very ground. Of Trasilla, it is reported, that being dead she was found to have her elbows as hard as horn, by leaning to a desk at which she used to pray. St James is said to have had knees as hard as camel's knees, by his continual kneeling in prayer. And Paul the Eremite was found dead kneeling upon his knees, holding up his hands, lifting up his eyes; so that the very dead corpse seemed yet to live and to pray to God. (Jerome.)