"For it became him [the Father].... in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings" (Heb. 2:10).
Christ hath had experience of all trials whereinto any of his servants can fall, poverty, forsaking of friends, exile, imprisonment, hunger, nakedness, watching, weariness, pain of body, heaviness of heart, desertion as to sense, wrath and curse of God. Christ hath carried his feeling with him into heaven; he knew what poverty meaneth, what trouble of conscience, what heaviness of spirit meaneth. Christ could not so experimentally pity us, so feelingly pity us, if he were not like us in all things; his heart was entendered by experience, as a man that hath felt the gout and felt the stone. Israel knew the heart of a stranger; Christ knew the heart of a man that is left to the world's frowns and snares. He took a communion of our nature and miseries, as a pawn and pledge that he will pity us and help us.
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Thomas Manton was an English Puritan clergyman.
Born at Lydeard St Lawrence, Somerset, Manton was educated at Blundell's School and then at Hart Hall, Oxford where he graduated BA in 1639. Joseph Hall, bishop of Norwich, ordained him deacon the following year: he never took priest's orders, holding that he was properly ordained to the ministerial office. He was then appointed town lecturer of Collumpton in Devon. In the winter of 1644-1645, he was appointed to preach at St Mary's Church in the parish of Stoke Newington in Middlesex, where in 1646 he was joined by Alexander Popham as the parish's ruling elder and began to build a reputation as a forthright and popular defender of Reformed principles.
Although Manton is little known now, in his day he was held in as much esteem as men like John Owen. He was best known for his skilled expository preaching, and was a favourite of John Charles Ryle, who championed his republication in the mid-19th century. His finest work is probably his Exposition of James.