Will ye speak wickedly for God? and talk deceitfully for him?
Ver. 7. Will ye speak wickedly for God?] Ought ye to defend God's justice by unjustly accusing me? Or must ye needs so free him from injustice, that ye must charge me with hypocrisy? Job had before called them physicians of no value; here he compareth them to lawyers of no conscience, that care not what they plead, so they may carry the cause of their client. But the Lord needeth no such advocates; he so loveth truth, that he will not borrow patronage to his cause from falsehood; he so hateth flattery (though it be of himself) that he hath threatened to cut off all flattering lips, Psalms 12:3; and would one day say as much to Job's friends, notwithstanding their pretended zeal for his glory, as once Alexander the Great did to Aristobulus the historian, who presented him with a flattering piece concerning his own worthy acts, which he extolled above measure; he cast the book into the river Hydaspes, and told the author he could find in his heart to cast him after it.
And talk deceitfully for him?] To talk for God is our duty; it is to make our tongue our glory; but to talk deceitfully for him, to seek to hold his truth by our lie (the Vulgate here hath it, needeth God your lie?), that is altogether unlawful; for shall we do evil that good may come thereof? God forbid, Romans 3:8. And yet the Papists do so familiarly, and think they therein do God good service; as when they deny his provident hand in ordering the disorders of the world to his own glory, lest they should make him the author of sin; so they think to defend his justice by teaching predestination according to foreseen works, by ascribing to man free will, righteousness of works, merit, &c. So their doctrine of equivocation for the relief of persecuted Catholics, their piae fraudes (as they call them), their holy hypocrisy to draw infidels to the embracing of the faith, and to the love of virtue; their lying legends, made, say they, for good intention, that the common people might with greater zeal serve God and his saints; and especially, to draw the women to good order, being by nature facile and credulous, addicted to novelties and miracles (Spec. Hist. lib. 29).