As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.
Ver. 16. Hard to be understood] See my True Treasure. In things necessary the Scripture is plain and easy; and the very entrance thereinto giveth light, saith David, Psalms 119:30; yea, subtilty and sagacity, saith Solomon, Proverbs 1:4. And for the more dark and difficult places, Legum obscuritates non assignemus culpae scribentium, sed inscitiae non assequentium, saith he in Gellius, the fault is not to be laid upon the Scriptures, but upon our uuskilfulness and inability to understand them.
Which they that are unlearned and unstable] That for want of sacred learning are unsettled, ill-bottomed; and do therefore, like Peter on the water, walk one step and sink another. Our forefathers (saith Speed out of Walsingham) did not without great reason distinguish the people into learned and lewd; because such are commonly lewd who are not learned. Sure we are out of this text, that they are unstable that are unlearned; and that men therefore err because they know not the Scriptures in the right sense of them, Matthew 2:2; they err in heart because they know not God's ways, and become a prey to seducers, because "ever learning, but never come to the knowledge of the truth," 2 Timothy 3:7; "The simple believeth every word," saith Solomon, Proverbs 14:1. The blind man swalloweth many a fly, saith our English proverb. The god of this world blinds the minds of his vassals, keeps them ignorant, and then doth what he will with them, as the Philistines did with Samson when they had digged out his eyes. He useth the same method ordinarily to carry on his designs, that he took in the Parlamentum iudoctum, the lack learning Parliament, held here A. D. 1404, in the reign of Henry IV (Speed, 775); or as in the Council of Ariminum. The Arians have procured the exile of the orthodox learned bishops, and perceiving the company that was left, though they were very unlearned, yet they would not be persuaded directly to disannul anything that had been before concluded in the Council of Nice, did abuse their ignorance in proposing the matter, and drawing them to their side. For they demanded of them whether they would worship ομοουσιον, or Christ? These not understanding the Greek word, rejected it with execration, being, as they thought, opposed unto Christ, (Ruffin. Eccles. Hist. lib. x.)
Wrest, as they do, &c.] When we strive to give unto the Scriptures, and not to receive from it the sense, when we factiously contend to fasten our conceits on God, like the harlot, take our dead and putrefied fancies, and lay them in the bosom of the Scriptures, as of a mother, when we compel them to go two miles which of themselves would go but one, when we put words into the mouths of these oracles by mis-inferences or mis-applications, then are we guilty of this sin of wresting the Scriptures. Tertullian speaketh of some that murder the Scriptures to serve their own purposes. And the same author fitly calleth Marcion, the heretic, Murem Ponticum, the rat of Pontus, because of his gnawing and tawing the Scripture to make it serviceable to his errors (Caedem Scripturarum faciunt); this is a very dangerous sin, when men shall writhe the Scripture, and set it on the tenters to fit it to their fancies, as Scyron and Procrustes are said to have fitted their guests to the bed of brass which they had framed to their own size.