Matthew Poole and continuators on 1 Peter 4:3

3 For the time past of our lives may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles , when we walked in lasciviousness , lusts, excess of wine, revellings , banquetings , and abominable Idolatries :

The Apostle doth not mean by this Expression meerly that they should forbear their former Lusts, out of a Saciety and Weariness, as having had their fill of them, but stir them up to Holiness by minding them of their former sinful life, q. d. ye are concerned to run well now, when ye have for so great a part of your time run wrong. It is a Figure whereby he mitigates and lenifies the sharpness of his Reproof for their former sinful life: See the like, Ezek. 44.6. and 45.9. Mark 14.41.

Some Copies read ye, and that agrees with the following Verse, where the second Person is made use of: or if we read according to our Translation, us, it is a Figure called Anaco[illegible: 1 letter]nosis, whereby Peter assumes to himself in common with them what yet in his own Person he was never guilty of, as Isa. 64.6, 7. Dan. 9.5. &c. or else it may be an Enallagy of the Person, whereby the first is put for the second.

Viz. those that were profane and ignorant of God and Christ, and so it is the same as the Lusts of Men, v. 2.

Had our Conversation, as Eph. 2.3. walking being taken for the Course of Man's Life; and sometimes in an evil way, as 2 Pet. 2.10. and 3.3. Iude 16, 18. and sometimes in a good, as Luke 1.6.

Especially outward Acts here set in distinction from Lusts, which implies those inward motions from which those outward Defilements proceed.

Unseasonable and luxurious feasting, Rom. 13.13. Gal. 5.21.

Compotations, or meetings for Drinking, Prov. 23.30. Isa. 5.11, 22.

Quest. Why doth Peter charge the Iews with Idolatry, who generally kept themselves from it after the Babylonish Captivity? Ans. 1. Tho most did, yet all might not. 2ly. It is a sort of Idolatry to eat things sacrificed to Idols, which many of the Iews being dispersed among the idolatrous Gentiles, and being invited by them to their Idol-Feasts, might possibly do; and, being under the Temptation of Poverty, might too far conform themselves to the Customs of the Nations among which they were. 3ly. Probably this Idolatry might be the Worship of Angels, frequent among the Gentiles, particularly the Colossians inhabiting a City of Phrygia, which was a part of Asia where many Iews were, chap. 1.1. 4ly. The Churches to which he wrote might be made up of Iews and Gentiles, and the Apostle may, by a Synechdoche, ascribe that to all in common, which yet is to be understood only of a part.

Marginal references: Eph. 4.17.