But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils.
Ver. 24. This fellow doth not cast out devils, &c.] The devil that was cast out of the demoniac's body seems to have gotten into these men's hearts. But he was not his master crafts: for what a senseless slander hear we? He should have acted it a little better, to have been believed. Tenue mendacium pellucet, saith Tacitus. This was such a lie as might be easily looked through. But envy never regards how true, but how mischievous. Witness the Popish Pharisees, who tell the poor misled and muzzled people in their sermons that the Protestants are blasphemers of God and all his saints; that the English are grown barbarous, and eat young children; that ever since the pope excommunicated us we are as black as devils; that the gunpowder treason was plotted, and should have been acted, by the Puritans; that the fall of Blackfriars in London likewise was wrought by the Puritans, who had loosened the rafters, &c. a That these are the opinions we hold and teach: 1. To worship no God. 2. To frame our religion to the times. 3. To account gain godliness. 4. To pretend public liberty to our private lusts. 5. To break our oaths, when it makes for our advantage. 6. To cover hatred with flattery. 7. To confirm tyranny with bloodshed, &c. These and the like, that Cacodaemon Joannes, the black mouthed Jesuit, tells the world in print are our tenets and practices. Now "the Lord rebuke thee, Satan." But what reward shall be given to thee, thou false tongue? Even sharp arrows, with hot burning coals; yea, those very coals of hell from whence thou wert enkindled.
a Ex dissolutis per Puritanos continationibus, &c. D. Prid. Lect.