Easter Meditation from Lightfoot

Here is Lightfoot’s wonderful paraphrastic translation of 2 Cor. 1. Reflect on this in your prayer and quiet time today and it will do you good. (BW3)

Blessed is God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the compassionate Father (the Father who bestows mercies) of all comfort, He that comforts us in all our tribulation to the end that we may be able to comfort you who are involved in every tribulation and the comfort wherewith we are comforted ourselves of God; for as the sufferings of Christ befall us abundantly, so through Christ’s agency does our consolation also abound. So on the one hand whether we undergo tribulation it is for your comfort and salvation who works in your patient enduring the same sufferings which we also suffer (and our hope of you that will so steadfastly endure, is unshaken) or whether on the other hand we are consoled here again it is for your comfort and salvation, for you know that as you share our sufferings with us, so you will also share our comfort. I speak of our sufferings for we would not have you ignorant, neither about the tribulation which befell us in Asia, how that beyond measure and beyond our powers (of endurance) we were oppressed, so that we utterly despaired even of life, but (this was not without a good purpose for) we have had the answer of death in ourselves (in our own hearts) that we may not place our confidence in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; who delivered us from so great a death and is delivering us (ῥύσεται) on whom we have rested our hopes that he will still deliver us, while you too deliver your joint aid on our behalf in your supplication that so for the gift bestowed on us by the intercession of many, thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf.
For our boasting is thus, the testimony of our conscience that in godly singleness (of heart) and sincerity, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we walked (in our conversation) in the world, and especially in our dealings with you.
For we write none other things, but only those which you read, or even acknowledge without their being written, and I hope you will acknowledge them to the end, as also you did acknowledge us in part, how that we are your boast, even as you also are ours, in the day of our Lord Jesus.