But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the sabbath day.
Ver. 2. Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful] This was as the proverb is, Sus Minervam, a pig is Minerva, when blind Pharisees will be teaching Christ how the Sabbath is to be sanctified. Not Hebrews only, but also Greeks and barbarians rested from work on the seventh day: witness Josephus, Clement Alexander, and Eusebius. Howbeit, to the Hebrews at Mount Sinai, God, for a special favour, made known his holy Sabbath, Nehemiah 9:14, commanding them to do no servile work therein, Leviticus 23:7,8. This excludes not works of piety, charity, and necessity, such as was this of the disciples in the text. The Jews in their superstition would not fight on the Sabbath, and therefore lost their chief city to the Romans, under the command of Pompey, who took the advantage of the day to do his utmost then against them. a In later times they grew more rigid in this point: for on the Sabbath they would not spit, ease nature, get out of an outhouse, if by mishap they had fallen into it, as that Jew of Tewkesbury. This ever was and is the guise of hypocrites, to strain at gnats and swallow camels. Witness our modern Pharisees, the monks and Jesuits, who stumble at straws and leap over mountains. Their schoolmen determined that it was a less crime to kill a thousand men than for a poor man to mend his shoe on the Sabbath day. b
a Romani quoties dies huiusmodi rediissent fortissime percutiebant.
b Levius esse crimen mille homines iugulare, quam semel die Dominico pauperi calceum consuere. Pareus in loc.