1 Thessalonians 5:23

And the very God of peace, &c.— "And may that God himself, who is reconciled to you by the blood of Christ, and is the author, giver, and approver of peace one with another, and in your own consciences, and of all manner of prosperity; may he thoroughly purge your whole person from all iniquity, and make you eminently partakers of his holiness." I would translate the original ολοκληρον υμων, your whole person, because the word signifies the whole of a thing given by lot, consequently the whole of any thing; and here the whole frame of our nature, our whole person. Accordingly, Dr. Chandler has shewed, that this word is applied to a city, whose buildings are all standing; and to an empire, which has all its provinces; and to an army, whose troops are undiminished by any accident or calamity.

Your whole spirit, and soul, and body,— The Pythagoreans, Platonists, and Stoics, divided the immaterial part of man into spirit and soul; an opinion which they seem to have derived from the most antient tradition, founded, perhaps, on the Mosaic account of the formation of man, Genesis 2:7 where it is said, that God formed man, his body, of the dust of the earth, and breathed into man the breath of life, or lives; and, by means of this union, man became a living soul, par-taker of a sensitive, as well as of arational life. In short, the apostle's prayer does at least include this,—That theymightbethoroughly sanctified, of how many constituent parts soever their nature consisted. Dr. Heylin has it, May every part of you, your spirit, &c