Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her.
29 Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.
Ver. 29. Ye do err, not knowing] Ignorance is a breeder. All sins are seminally in ignorance. St Paul thanks it for all his persecutions, 1 Timothy 1:13. Aristotle makes it the mother of all the misrule in the world. (Ethic. 3.) All heresies, saith Chemnitius, are known to have proceeded, Vel ex supercilio Samosateni fastu, vel ex Arrii dialectica, vel ex Aetii ολιγομαθεια, from pride, sophistry, or ignorance.
Nor the power of God] Who can as easily raise the dead as he did at first create them. This the Athenians, with all their learning, understood not; and therefore counted all that St Paul could say to it, bibble babble (σλερμολογος), because he preached Jesus, and Anastasis, or the resurrection, which they took to be some strange goddess,Acts 17:18,19. They saw not how there could possibly be a regress from a privation to a habit. Neither can any of us see it, unless God by his Spirit of revelation give us to know what is the exceeding greatness of his power, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in raising Christ, and us by him,Ephesians 1:19,20, where it is easy to observe a six-fold gradation in the original, and all to set forth the power of God, in Christ's and our resurrection.