And they truly were many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death:
Ver. 23. By reason of death] Neither their holiness nor learning could privilege them from death's impartial stroke. Non te tua plurima Pantheu, labentem texit pietas. All our learning also is soon refuted with one black theta, which understanding us not, snappeth us unrespectively without distinction, and putteth at once a period to our reading and to our being.