But I said unto their children in the wilderness, Walk ye not in the statutes of your fathers, neither observe their judgments, nor defile yourselves with their idols:
Ver. 18. Walk ye not in the statutes of your fathers.] With this text Frederick IV, prince palatine, answered another prince, who pressed him to be of his late noble father's religion. Laban swore by the god of Nahor, or Abram, and of their idolatrous fathers; but Jacob sware by the "fear of his father Isaac," his immediate father more right in religion. Gen 31:53 Joshua would not follow the footsteps of his forefathers, Jos 24:15 but a better precedent. Christ saith, Ego sum veritas, non vetustas; I am the truth not antiquity, and contradicteth that which was said of old by those Kadmonim, who had corrupted the letter of the law by their false glosses. Mat 5:21 Antiquity must have no more authority than it can maintain.