viz. a speech borrowed from bonds or chains wherewith men's bodies are
bound in prison or in captivity, or from which the body is loosed: we
are naturally all under sin, Rom. v. 12, and therefore liable to death,
Rom. vi. 23. Now sins are to the soul as bonds and cords, Prov. v. 22.
_The bond of iniquity_, Acts viii. 23; and death with the pains thereof,
are as chains, 2 Pet. ii. 4, Jude 6; in hell as in a prison, 1 Pet.
iii. 10: the remission or retaining of these sins, is the loosing or the
binding of the soul under these cords and chains. So that the keys
themselves are not material but metaphorical; a metaphor from stewards
in great men's houses, kings' houses, &c., into whose hands the whole
trust and ordering of household affairs is committed, who take in and
cast out servants, open and shut doors, &c., do all without control of
any in the family save the master of the family. Such, in the Hebrew
phrase, are said to be _over the house_, Gen. xliii. 18; Isa. xxii. 15;
2 Kings xviii. 18: and the keys of the house are committed to them as a
badge of their power. So that when God threatens to put Shebna out of
his office in the king's house, and to place Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, in
his room, he saith, "I will commit thy government into his hand--and the
key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder," Isa. xxii. 21,
22, parallel of that phrase, "and the government shall be upon his
shoulder," Isa. ix. 6. Hence, as key is in the Old Testament used for
stewardly power and government, Isa. xxii. 21, 22; (only twice properly,
Judges iii. 25; 1 Chron. ix. 27;) so in the New Testament, _key_ is
always used, metaphorically, to denote power, and that about
ecclesiasticals or spirituals, viz. in Matt. xvi. 19; Luke xi. 52; Rev.
i. 18, and iii. 7, and ix. 1, and xx. 1. So that _keys_, &c., are
metaphorically the ordinances which Christ hath instituted, to be
dispensed in his church, preaching the word, administrations of the
seals and censures: for it is not said _key_, but _keys_, which
comprehendeth them all: by the right use of which both the gates of the