“The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed:”
He useth a preface touching the circumstance of his own person: to wit, that he as their companion, communeth with them not of matters which he knoweth not, but wherein he is as well experienced as any, and propoundeth unto them no other condition but that which he himself hath sustained before them, and doth still take the same pains, and also hath one selfsame hope together with them. He describeth peculiarly the office of the Elders, that is to say, of them that have the care of the Church.