did it because they that are in the flesh cannot please God which is in effect sending all married persons to Hell This was one part of the pretended mortification of false Teachers about Marriage the other was about Meats S. Paul knew no such holiness in one sort of Meat above another as though men could fast their bellies full of one but the least taste of the other destroyed it What a pleasant thing it is to account that fasting which the unmortified Epicures of old accounted their most delicious feasting viz. Fish and Wine This is not doing so much as the Pharisees did for they appeared unto men to fast but in the Church of Rome they cannot be said to do that unless fasting and eating be the same thing But may not the Church call not eating prohibited meat fasting No doubt it may as well as call that no bread which we see and taste and handle to be bread However I cannot understand but if their Church had so pleased the eating Flesh and abstaining from Fish might have been called fasting and so they might have made one entire Fast of a whole years eating and notwithstanding all the pretence of fasting and mortification in that Church I cannot see that any man is bound by the Laws of it to keep one true fast all the dayes of his life But if all the mortification required lyes only in a distinction of meats the false Apostles went beyond them in it for they utterly forbid some sorts saying touch not taste not handle not and not meerly to shew their obedience to the commands of the Church but that they might not gratifie the desires of the flesh and therefore the Apostle saith these things had on that account a shew of wisdom in them being in all probability taken from the severe precepts of the Pythagorean Philosophy which makes him bid them Beware lest they were spoiled through Philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men and the principles of the world and not after Christ. For if this sort of mortification were a thing so pleasing to God the Heathen principles were more agreeable to his nature than the doctrine of Christianity This only requires the subduing our inward lusts and in order to that to keep the body in subjection but in the mysteries of the Heaten Religion far greater severities were to be undergone in order to their participation of them And the hardships were so great in some of their initiations especially those of Mithras that some dyed before they could pass through them and yet for any to be admitted without them was present death to them They were to make confession of their sins shave their heads change their habits lye upon the bare ground fast for several dayes and when they eat it was to be only of some certain meats these and many other severities they were to go through in order to the purifying their souls as they thought and bringing them to the state they were in before they came into the body Some part of these hardships the Pythagoreans took into their Philosophy and from them the Colossians began to be infected with them but S. Paul calls them only vain deceits the commandments and doctrines of men things that made a fair shew but he looks upon them as corruptions of the doctrine of Christ. Yet afterwards the Montanists and Encratitae and others were much stricter and more frequent in these fasts and abstinence than the Catholick Christians but the Church thought fit to condemn them as corrupters of Christianity By all which we see how apt men are to be deceived by false Teachers when they pretend to so much Mortification above what Christianity requires from them 3. They pretended to know the mind of Christ better than the Apostles did they pretended that they had conversed familiarly with Christ upon earth and understood his meaning better than the Apostles did And therefore their Disciples in the Church of Corinth were neither for Paul nor Apollos nor Cephas but they were only for Christ and gave out that from him they understood that what he had said concerning the Resurrection was only to be understood of the state of Regeneration which doctrine it seems had gotten great footing in the Church of Corinth by their means They reported that the Apostles understood only some common and ordinary things but the deeper and more hidden mysteries were only made known to them which makes S. Paul in his Epistles to those Churches which they had corrupted speak so often of his understanding the mysteries of God But we speak the wisdom of God in a mysterie even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world to our glory having made known unto us the mysterie of his will whereby ye may understand my knowledge in the mysterie of Christ. The true Apostles declared that they kept back nothing of the counsel of God but delivered it openly and plainly to make all men see and understand what that mysterie was the false Apostles pretended that the Doctrine and Writings of the Apostles did not contain all the great mysteries of the Gospel but they were received from Christs own mouth and conveyed to others by a secret and oral tradition The things written by the Evangelists they could not deny to be true but they were dark and obscure and could not be understood but by the help of their Oral Tradition and upon this principle Cerinthus Basilides Valentinus and Marcion went as appears by Irenaeus For when they saw they could never make good their Doctrines by the writings of the New Testament they sought to blast the reputation of these and set up the Authority of an Oral Tradition above them Men do not use to pick quarrels with their Friends and therefore when we find any charging the Scripture with obscurity and imperfection we have reason to believe they hope for no comfort from it 4. They made use of the most subtle and crafty methods of deceiving To this end they were very busie and active watching every opportunity therefore S. Paul charges them with sleight and cunning craftiness lying in wait to deceive i.e. with using all the arts and tricks of deceivers as 1. By deep dissimulation and disguising themselves not appearing at first to be what they really are nor letting them understand what their true doctrine and design is If any of those they hope to gain object any thing against them how do they pity their ignorance and revile their Teachers that did so foully misrepresent their Doctrines to them Alas for them poor men they neither understand us nor our Religion They have taken up things upon trust their prejudice will not suffer them to examine things as they are Have you not been told thus and thus concerning us and not one word of it is true Never trust such men more come be perswaded by us and then you shall be truly
who were foretold by the Prophets that should come for the redemption of his People for many shall come in my Name saying I am Christ and shall deceive many Not as though they pretended to be sent by Christ but that they would assume to themselves the Dignity and Authority of the true Messias and of this sort there were many that arose among the Jews such as Theudas Jonathas Barchochebas and many others But besides these there were false Prophets some of which did openly oppose Christianity such as that Bar-Jesus mentioned in the Acts but there were others who pretended to own Christianity and to prophesie in the Name of Christ whom S. Peter calls false Teachers and whom S. Paul describes by the same character that our Saviour here doth But I know that after my departing shall grievous Wolves enter in among you not sparing the flock also of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things to draw disciples after them whom he elsewhere sets forth by their Sheeps clothing when he saith that by good words and fair speeches they deceive the hearts of the simple whom he calls false Apostles deceitful workers transforming themselves into the Apostles of Christ which carryed so fair a shew and appearance among the people that S. Paul was very full of jealousie and apprehension concerning them lest they should by degrees draw away his Disciples from the simplicity of the Gospel of Christ. For I am jealous over you saith he with godly jealousie but I fear lest by any means as the Serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. It may seem strange that after the Apostles had with so much care and diligence planted the Gospel of Christ in several Churches they should express so much fear as they did and especially S. Paul of their being so soon corrupted by these false Teachers as he doth not only of the Corinthians but of the Galatians too I marvel saith he that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ. And O foolish Galatians who hath bewitched you that you should not obey the truth and of the Ephesians That we henceforth be no more Children tossed to and fro and carryed about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lye in wait to deceive and of the Colossians Beware lest any man spoil you through Philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men after the rudiments of the world and not after Christ. And Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of Angels and of the Hebrews Be not carried about with diverse and strange doctrines But we shall see this great Caution delivered here first by our Saviour and afterwards by his Apostles was no more than necessary if we consider under what pretences they came and what Arts and Methods these false Teachers used to delude and seduce the people 1. They pretended to the same infallible Spirit which the Apostles had And this may be the reason why our Saviour doth not here call them false Teachers but false Prophets For Prophecy in its proper notion doth not relate to future events but to divine Inspiration So S. Chrysostom saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Prophet saith he is the same with Gods interpreter so the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is used in Greek Authors as in the Author of the Book de Mundo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is rendered by Apuleius effari caeteris and Festus saith that the Latines called those Prophets which were oraculorum interpretes and so the Hebrew words are taken in the same sense without any relation to foretelling things to come So Moses is said to be a God to Pharaoh and Aaron thy Brother shall be thy Prophet i. e. thy interpreter Abraham is called a Prophet and the Patriarchs are all called Prophets in regard that Divine Revelations were more common before the written Law but the reason why the name of Prophecy came to be restrained to the prediction of things to come was because future events lying most out of the reach of mens knowledge the fore-telling of these was looked upon as the greatest evidence of divine inspiration But in the New Testament prophesying is often taken for the gift of interpreting the hard places of the Old Testament as Themistius calls one that interpreted the hard places in Aristotle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thence Prophesying is reckoned among the spiritual gifts and so these false Prophets were not men who pretended to fore-tell future events but to the assistance of an infallible Spirit in giving the sense of Scripture and by this pretence they transformed themselves into the Apostles of Christ giving out that they enjoyed equal priviledges with them whereby three things may be observed which deserve our consideration 1. That nothing is more easie than for false Teachers to pretend to an infallible Spirit such whom our Saviour and his Apostles did warn men especially against pretended to be Prophets and Apostles and to know the mind of Christ better than they who truly had the assistance of the Holy Ghost Some think the bare pretence to Infallibility ought in such a divided state of the Christian world to be entertained as the best expedient to end Controversies and that Church which doth alone challenge it ought on that account to be submitted to as though the most confident pretenders were to be soonest believed so they will be do what we can by the weakest sort of mankind but by none who have and use their judgements If bare pretences were sufficient Simon Magus did bid the fairest to be Head of the Church for he pretended to be Gods Vicar upon earth or the divine Power sent down from Heaven which none of the Apostles pretended to Why then did not the Christian Church submit to Montanus his Paraclete when no other Christians pretended to such an immediate inspiration as he did And certainly Prisca and Maximilla were better Oracles than a Crucifix was to a late Pope If there be any thing beyond a bare pretence to an infallible Spirit we desire to see better arguments for it than the false Apostles could produce for theirs if there be nothing but a bare pretence we must leave the Pope and Quakers to dispute it out 2. That the pretence to Divine Inspiration is very dangerous to the Christian Church For we see what mischief it did in the Apostolical times when there was a true infallible Spirit in the Apostles of Christ to discover and confute it yet notwithstanding all the care and diligence of the Apostles many were seduced by it For those who have the least ground do commonly use the greatest confidence and denounce Hell
and damnation the soonest to those who despise and reject them Which being expressed with a grim countenance and a terrible accent startles and shakes more persons of weak judgements and timorous dispositions than all the reasons and arguments they could ever produce This hath alwayes been the method of deceivers to pretend to the highest and then make the sin of those who do not believe them as great as if the thing were real Thus the rejecting mens Fanatick pretences to Revelations and Extasies is cryed out upon as blaspheming the Holy Ghost and refusing to believe upon the Roman Churches pretended Infallibility is called no less than denying Gods Veracity We profess to believe the true inspiration of the Holy Ghost and every tittle of what God hath revealed but we will not swallow Pretences for Evidences nor Enthusiasms for Revelations For as the true Religion was at first founded upon Divine Inspiration so we know that the greatest corruptions of it have sprung from the pretence to it Maimonides saith that the first beginning of Pagan Idolatry was owing to the pretence of Inspiration and immediate Revelations for the Worship of the Stars However that be we are certain the Devil made use of Oracles and Enthusiasms as the most effectual means to bring men to the practice of it both in Aegypt in Greece and many other places and they who have taken the pains to collect them have reckoned one hundred and sixty several Oracles that were in request in the times of Paganism After Christianity began to be setled in the world the greatest corrupters of it were the pretenders to Dinive Inspiration as the false Apostles the Gnosticks the Montanists and many others And the pretence to this is so much the more dangerous because it bids high and is easily taken up and requires no learning or wit but only confidence to manage it and may carry men by impulses and motions to the most unwarrantable actions and where it meets with an Enthusiastical temper is very hardly removed 3. We may observe that a truly infallible Spirit is not sufficient to put an end to Controversies For when was that ever more evident than in the holy Apostles after the miraculous descent of the Holy Ghost upon them Many are apt to say now That there will never be an end of these wranglings and Schisms and disputes in Religion till there be an infallible Judge to put an issue to them But were there not infallible Judges in the Apostles time that gave infinitely greater evidence of an infallible Spirit than any ever since have done But were Controversies put to an end by it No certainly when the Apostles complain so much of the Schisms and divisions and errors and heresies and disputes and quarrellings that were among them And if so great an evidence of a Divine Spirit manifested by their Miracles had no greater effect then what can we imagine the shadow of S. Peter or the dream of infallibility can do in the Roman Church And give me leave to say it is the Inquisition and not Infallibility which keep things quiet among them But God deliver us from such an end of Controversies 2. The false Prophets and Apostles pretended to greater mortification and self-denyal than the true Apostles did S Hierom understands their coming in Sheeps clothing of this pretence to greater severity and rigour of life than others used Those that go about to deceive must appear to have something extraordinary this way to raise an admiration of them among those who judge of Saints more by their looks than by their actions Whereas the greatest Hypocrites have been alwayes the greatest pretenders this way Our blessed Saviour was so far from making any shew of this rigour and severity that he was reproached by the Scribes and Pharisees those mortified Saints to be a wine-bibber a friend to Publicans and Sinners Alas what heavenly looks and devout gestures and long prayers and frequent fastings had they more than Christ or his Disciples The poor Widows were so ravished with their long prayers that they thought they could not do better with their houses or estates than to put them into the hands of such mortified men to the world till they found notwithstanding their Sheeps clothing that by their devouring they were ravening Wolves Those that seem so much to fly from the world do but as Souldiers in a Battel sometimes do that seem to fly from their enemies but only with a design to make them follow that they may have the more advantage upon them One would think no men were so afraid of the world as they that seem to run so fast from it but they lay their Ambuscado's to entrap it and if once it gets into their hand no men know better how to be revenged upon it What pleasant incongruities are these to see men grow rich by Vows of Poverty retired from the world and yet the most unquiet and busie in it Mortified to the pleasures of life and yet delighting most in following the Courts of Princes Such kind of men were the Pharisees of old and who would have thought that under the Name of that Jesus who so much detested and abhorred their hypocrisie there should others arise who have outdone them in their own way As though Christ had said Except your righteousness be like the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees ye shall not enter in the Kingdom of Heaven But we need not wonder that in these latter ages such pretences should be made use of since in the very beginning of the Christian Church these were the common arts of deceivers They found fault with the Apotles as giving too much liberty to men in the use of Marriage and Meats but they thought the state of the one was not agreeable to their sanctity nor the free use of the other consistent with their severe and mortified life For they did forbid to marry and commanded to abstain from meats They would not make use of the liberty which God had allowed but they were ready to take that which he had forbidden therefore the Apostle gives the true character of them when he saith they spake lyes in hypocrisie There was an outward shew of sanctity and severity in their doctrine but no men are observed by Ecclesiastical Historians to have been more eager of what God had forbidden than they who were so scrupulous about what God had allowed We do not say the case is altogether the same where men are forbidden absolutely as though Marriage were unlawful in it self which was the case of the antient Hereticks and where it is forbidden only to a particular Order of men as it is in the Church of Rome but this we say that where it is forbidden to a particular Order of men as though it did not become the sanctity of that Order this is reviving that hypocrisie which S. Paul condemns especially when it is forbidden on such an account as Pope Siricius
enlightned 2. By raising prejudices against their Teachers as they did in the Church of Corinth against S. Paul representing him as a man of a mean and contemptible presence and rude in speech Come say they and hear our Preachers with what admirable eloquence and moving expressions they speak how they dart beams of light into mens minds and strike through the souls of men you would never care for this dull and obscure way of S. Paul more But this is a small thing to disparage only his gifts Observe say they his doctrine and see whither it tends is not he against those that forbid to marry and abstain from meats Judge now whither these loose doctrines lead men So S. Paul tell us that they had represented him as one that walked after the flesh and had prevailed so far upon the people by these sly insinuations as though all he aimed at was only for his own advantage viz. that he might be popular and get himself an interest among that rich people of Corinth so that he tells them he was fain to live upon other Churches to do them service and he tells us afterwards the false Apostles gave the occasion of it in the Churches of Galatia they had turned his greatest friends to be his enemies and he give this account of it they would exclude us that you might affect them 3. By sowing Schisms divisions among them This was their master-piece to beget contentions where they could not prevail themselves What joy was it to them to see in the Church of Corinth such parties and factions made among them some for Paul some for Apollos some for Cephas from hence proceeded envying and strife and divisions among them and this gave them a fair opportunity of breaking them in pieces one against another And therefore the Apostle saw it necessary to use the utmost means to cure these divisions among them and elsewhere beseeches the Christians to mark them that cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned and avoid them for they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple i.e. they carry on their own designs and interests by these means and therefore study all the wayes to foment and increase them Why should the disciples of Peter yield to those of Paul and why should not those of Apollos be regarded as much as either And such was the unhappy success of these mens arts in this divided Church of Corinth that notwithstanding all the care of S. Paul to put an end to their factions they brake out with greater fury afterwards as appears by the Epistle of Clemens to them and he takes notice of those who did cast the arrows of contention among them and therefore he makes that the chief argument of his Epistle to defeat the design of the false Teachers by perswading them to peace and unity among themselves 4. By the most plausible insinuations By good words and fair speeches saith S. Paul they deceive the hearts of the simple they might find by their softness and gentleness that they were in Sheeps clothing How meek and humble and insinuating are they where they have any hopes of a prey how do the bowels of these ravening Wolves yearn towards the silly sheep that look only on their outsides They would not hurt a limb of them for all the world Nothing but meer zeal for their good could make them run such hazards and venture so much as they do What end could they have in following such stray Sheep but to reduce them to the true sheepfold Thus if the Wolves may be believed there is no danger to the Sheep but from their Shepherds let them but forsake them and then see what admirable love and peace and unity they would live together in but the Apostle well adds to all this deceiving the hearts of the simple for none else are capable of being thus deceived by all their fair pretences and plausible insinuations 5. The false Teachers were for a more pompous and easie way of Religion than the true Apostles were These were for the purity and simplicity of the Gospel of Christ the other were for joyning the Iewish Ceremonies and the Heathen Customs together with it and by this means they hoped with much more ease to gain Proselytes to them especially when to this they added a greater liberty in mens lives so that by these offers they hoped to gain the vain the superstitious and the profaner sort wholly to them See how S Paul describes them having a form of godliness but denying the power of it for of this sort are they which creep into houses and lead captive silly women laden with sins led away with divers lusts These were subjects rightly disposed to be deceived by them their folly made them capable and their lusts very tractable to such a formal pompous easie Religion It was by this indulgence of men in their sins that vile Sect of the Gnosticks gained so much ground in the beginnings of Christianity S. Chrysostom thinks these words of our Saviour have a particular respect to the foregoing words Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life and few there be that find it Now these words coming immediately after seem to imply that these false Prophets were for making the gate wider and the way to Heaven larger than Christ hath done and such need not fear they shall have many followers and especially of those who are farthest from the Kingdom of Heaven All the blessedness our Saviour promises is to the humble and contrite to the meek and righteous to the merciful pure and peaceable but if others make easier conditions of blessedness no wonder if their doctrine be entertained by those who are willing to be happy but unwilling to leave their sins As if false Teachers should turn our Saviours Beatitudes into such as these Blessed are ye if ye confess your sins to a Priest and receive the Sacrament of Penance for your sins are forgiven Blessed are ye if ye vow poverty and leave the world for ye shall inherit the earth Blessed are ye if ye go in Pilgrimages and visit the seven Churches especially in a year of Iubilee and receive the Popes benediction for ye shall be called the Children of God Blessed are ye if ye do or suffer evil for the Catholick Churches sake for great shall be your reward in Heaven Blessed are they that howsoever they live dye in S. Francis his habit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven For so Gregory the ninth saith that S. Francis obtained this priviledge of God that whosoever had that habit on could not dye ill and S. Francis adds himself That whosoever loved his Order in his heart how great a sinner soever he was should obtain mercy of God And are