But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
Ver. 13. Woe unto you, Scribes, &c.] By these eight dreadful woes, as by so many links of an adamantine chain, our Saviour draws these hypocrites down to hell, their place, and there leaves them to be reserved unto judgment. St Jerome was called Fulmen Ecclesiasticum, the Church's thunderbolt. How much more might this be attributed to Christ? How terribly doth he here thunderstrike these stupid Pharisees, though he saw well (saith Father Latimer) that whosoever will be busy with vae vobis woe to you, shall shortly after come coram nobis before men to us.
Ye shut up the kingdom of heaven] By hiding heavenly truths, teaching damnable errors, excommunicating the well affected, or corrupting them by evil counsel and example; and all this, εμπροσθεν coram et in os, before men, and to their faces, making fools of them, even while they look on, casting a mist before their eyes, as those Egyptian magicians did,Exodus 7:11,13; Exodus 7:19,22, and keeping from them that collyrium a that should cure and clear up their eye-sight, Revelation 3:18. Thus did Arandel, Archbishop of Canterbury, who bound up the word of God that it might not be preached in his time (as the historian's words are), b and was therefore (according to this woe here denounced) so smitten in his tongue that he could neither swallow nor speak for certain days before he died. Stephen Gardiner was plagued in like manner, for like reason. And generally the Popish clergy are vexed with that grievous and noisome sore of devilish spite against the Reformation, Revelation 16:2, which they therefore oppose with might and main till wrath come upon them to the utmost. And albeit many of them escape the visible vengeance of God, yet this terrible woe, as a moth, doth secretly eat them up like a garment, and as a worm, eateth them up like wood, Isaiah 51:8, as it did these Pharisees; on whose outside nothing could be discerned, all was as before, but their souls were blasted, seared, and sealed up to destruction. He that hath drunk poison falls not down dead presently in the place, but he hath his death about him, as we say. Saul lived and reigned long after he was cast off by God; and the very devils are respited in regard to their full torment, but the more is behind.
a A topical remedy for disorders of the eyes; an eye-salve or eye-wash. ŒD
b Quod verbum Dei alligasset, ne tempore suo praedicaretur. Tho. Gascon, in Dictionary of Theology.