The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one;
Ver. 38. The field is the world] The Christian world, the Church, not the Roman Catholic Church only, the Pope's territories, as he would have it. The Rogatian heretics would needs have made the world believe that they were the only Catholics. The Anabaptists have the same conceit of themselves. Munzer their chieftain, in his book written against Luther, and dedicated to Christ the most illustrious Prince (as he styleth him), inveigheth bitterly at him, as one that was merely carnal, and utterly void of the spirit of revelation. And Pareus upon this text tells us, that in a conference at Frankendale, the Anabaptists thus argued, The field is the world, therefore not the Church; that by the same reason they might deny, that tares breed in the Church. But tares are and will be in the visible Church, as our Saviour purposely teacheth by this parable.
The tares are the children of that wicked one] So called partly in respect of their serpentine nature, those corrupt qualities whereby they resemble the devil; and partly because they creep into the Church by Satan's subtlety, being his agents and emissaries. Agnosco te primogenitum diaboli, saith St John of that heretic Cerinthus. And hypocrites are his sons and heirs, the very freeholders of hell, and other sinners but their tenants, which have their part or lot with hypocrites, Matthew 24:29 .