Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.
Ver. 21. This kind goeth not out] Some devils then are not so potent, political, vile, villanous, as others: so neither are wicked men all alike wicked; some stigmatical Belialists face the heavens, burden the earth, please not God, and are contrary to all men, 1 Thessalonians 2:15. Others are more tame and tractable, as the young man on whom Christ looked and loved him. Yet, as when one commended the pope's legate at the Council of Basil, Sigismund the emperor answered, Tamen Romanus est: yet I am a Roman: so though the devil or his slaves seem never so fair conditioned, they are neither to be liked nor trusted. He is a devil still, and will do his kind: they are wicked still, and "wickedness proceedeth from the wicked," as saith the proverb of the ancients,1 Samuel 24:13. I have read of one that would haunt the taverns, theatres, and whore houses in London all day, but he dared not go forth without private prayer in the morning, and then would say at his departure, Now, devil, do thy worst; and so used his prayers as charms and spells against the weak, cowardly devil. This was not that prayer and fasting our Saviour here speaks of; men must not go forth to this spiritual fight, δορπον ελοντες, with their breakfast, as the Greeks in Homer, but praying and fasting from sin especially: for otherwise they do but light a candle before the devil, as the proverb hath it.