In order to be able to expound the scriptures, and as an aid to your pulpit studies, you will need to be familiar with the commentators: A glorious army, let me tell you, whose acquaintance will be your delight and profit.
Of course, you are not such wiseacres as to think or say that you can expound scripture without assistance from the works of divines and learned men who have laboured before you in the field of exposition. If you are of that opinion, pray remain so, for you are not worth the trouble of conversion, and you would resent the attempts as an insult to your infallibility. It seems odd, that certain men who talk so much of what the Holy Spirit reveals to themselves, should think so little of what He has revealed to others.
My chat this afternoon is not for these great originals, but for you who are content to learn of holy men, taught of God, and mighty in the scriptures. A respectable acquaintance with the opinion of the giants of the past might have saved many an erratic thinker from wild interpretations and outrageous inferences. Usually, we have found the despisers of commentaries to be men who have no sort of acquaintance with them; in their case, it is the opposite of familiarity which has bred contempt. It is true that there are a number of expositions of the whole Bible which are hardly worth shelf-room; the authors have spread a little learning over a vast surface; but who will deny the pre-eminent value of such expositions as those of Calvin, Ness, Henry, Trapp, Poole and Bengel, which are as deep as they are broad? And yet further, who can pretend to Biblical learning who has not made himself familiar with the great writers who spent a life in explaining some one sacred book? Caryl on Job will not exhaust the patience of a student who loves every letter of the Word; even Collinges, with his nine-hundred and nine pages upon one chapter of the Song, will not be too full for the preacher's use; nor will Manton's long-metre edition of the hundred and nineteenth psalm be too profuse. With attempting to give in detail the names of, I intend in a familiar talk to mention the more notable, who wrote upon the whole Bible, or on either Testament.
First among the mighty, then, for general usefulness, we are bound to mention the man whose name is a 
household word, - Matthew Henry. He is most pious and pithy, sound and sensible, suggestive and sober, terse and trustworthy. You will find him to be glittering in metaphors, rich in analogies, overflowing with illustrations, superabundant in reflections. He delights in apposition and alliteration; he is usually plain, quaint, and full of pith; he is deeply spiritual, heavenly, and profitable; finding good matter in every text, and from all deducing most practical and judicious lessons.
His is the kind of commentary to be placed where I saw it, in the old meeting-house at Chester – chained in the vestry for anybody and everybody to read. It is the poor man's commentary, the old Christian's companion; suitable to everybody, instructive to all.
You may be aware, perhaps, that the latter part of the New Testament was completed by other hands, the good man having gone the way of all flesh. The writers were Messrs Evans, Brown, Mayo, Bays, Rosewell, Harriss, Atkinson, Smith, Tong, Wright, Merrell, Hill, Reynold, and Billingsley – all Dissenting ministers. They have executed their work exceedingly well, and have worked in much of the matter which Henry and collected, and have done their best to follow his methods, but their combined production is far inferior to Matthew Henry himself, and any reader will soon detect the difference.
Every minister ought to read Matthew Henry entirely and carefully through once at least. Begin at the beginning, and resolve that you will traverse the goodly land from Dan to Beersheba. You will acquire a vast store of sermons if you read with your notebook close at hand; and as for thoughts, they will swarm around you like twittering swallows around an old gable towards the close of autumn. If you publicly expound the chapter you have just been reading, your people will wonder at the novelty of your remarks and the depth of your thoughts; and then you can tell them what a treasure Henry is. William Jay's sermons bear clear evidence of his having studied Matthew Henry almost daily. Many of the quaint things in Jay's sermons are either directly traceable to Matthew Henry or his familiarity with that writer. I have thought that the style of Jay was founded upon Matthew Henry: Matthew Henry is Jay writing, Jay is Matthew Henry preaching. What more could I say in commendation either of the preacher or the author?
It would not be possible for me too earnestly to press upon you the importance of reading the expositions of that prince among men, John Calvin. I have often felt inclined to cry out with Father Simon, a Roman Catholic, "Calvin possessed a sublime genius", and with Scaliger, "Oh how well has Calvin reached the meaning of the prophets – no one better!"
You have forty-two or more goodly volumes worth their weight in gold. Of all commentators I believe John Calvin to be the most candid. In his expositions he is not always what moderns would call Calvinistic; that is to say, where scripture maintains the doctrine of predestination and grace he flinches in no degree, but inasmuch as some scriptures bear the impress of human free action and responsibility, he does not shun to expound their meaning in all fairness and integrity. He was no trimmer and pruner of texts. He gave their meaning as far as he knew it. His honest intention was to translate the Hebrew and the Greek originals as accurately as he possibly could, and then to give the meaning which would naturally be conveyed buy such Greek and Hebrew words: he laboured, in fact, to declare, not his own mind upon the Spirit's words, but the mind of the Spirit as couched in those words. Dr King very truly says of him, "No writer ever dealt more fairly and honestly by the Word of God. He is scrupulously careful to let it speak for itself, and to guard against every tendency of his own mind to put upon it a questionable meaning for the sake of establishing some doctrine which he feels to be important, or some theory which he is anxious to uphold. This is one of his prime excellences. He will not maintain any doctrine, however orthodox and essential, by a text of scripture which to him appears of doubtful application, or of inadequate force."
If you needed any confirmatory evidence as to the value of Calvin's writings, I might summon a cloud of witnesses; here is the opinion of one, who is looked upon as his great enemy, namely, Arminius: "Next to the perusal of the scriptures, which I earnestly inculcate, I exhort my pupils to peruse Calvin's commentaries, which I extol in loftier terms than Hemlich himself; for I affirm that Calvin excels beyond comparison in the interpretation of scripture, and that his commentaries ought to be more highly valued than all that is handed down to us by the Library of the Fathers; so that I acknowledge him to have possessed above most others, or rather above all other men, what may be called an eminent gift of prophecy."