And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.
Ver. 13. Shall be called the house of prayer] A principal piece of God's public worship, and here put for the whole. Christ himself never came into this house but he preached as well as prayed. In the sanctuary was the incense altar in the middle, a type of prayer; the table of shewbread on the one side, betokening the twelve tribes, and the candlestick, a type of the word, on the other: to teach us that there is a necessity of both ordinances to all God's people.
But ye have made it a den of thieves] So Christ calleth not the money merchants only, but the priests also that set them to work. And whereas they cried, "the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord" (for to those was this speech first addressed, Jer 7:11), as if they could not do amiss because they served in the temple, the prophet tells them there, and our Saviour these here, that it is so much the worse. What should an angel of darkness do in heaven? Who required these things at your hands, to tread the courts of my temple? This is the gate of the Lord, into which the righteous only should enter, Psalms 118:20. The Papists in like sort cry out at this day, Ecclesia, Ecclesia, Nos sumus Ecclesia; and herewith think to shroud their base huckstering of holy things. For omnia Romae venalia, all things are saleable and soluble at Rome. But this covering is too short, and their gross thieveries are now made apparent to all the world, as their cross of grace and the blood of Hales were at Paul's cross by that noble Cromwell; and as their cheating trade of indulgencies and pope's pardons was by Luther, who by dint of argument overthrew those Romish money changers, and drove the country of those χριστοκαπηλοι and χριστεμποροι, as Nazianzen fitly calleth them.