Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
Ver. 24. Which strain at a gnat, &c.] A proverbial speech, warranting the lawful use of such expressions for illustration of a truth. The Greeks have a like proverb, Ανδριαντα γαργαλιζειν, to gargle down an image, statue, or coloss; that is, to make no bones of a foul fault when matters of less moment are much scrupled. Saul kept a great stir about eating the flesh with the blood, when he made nothing of shedding innocent blood, 1 Samuel 14:33. Doeg was detained before the Lord by some voluntary vow belike, 1 Samuel 21:7. But better he had been further off, for any good he did there. The priests made conscience of putting the price of blood into the treasury, Matthew 27:6, who yet made no conscience of imbruing their hands in the innocent blood of the Lamb of God. The Begardi and Beginnae, a certain kind of heretics, A.D. 1322, held this mad opinion, that a man might here attain to perfection, and that having attained to it, he might do whatsoever his nature led him to; that fornicari peccatum non esse reputabant: at mulieri osculum figere mortale facinus arbitrabantur, fornication was no sin, but to kiss a woman was a mortal wickedness, &c. a Archbishop Bancroft fell foul upon Master Paul Bayn, for a little black-work-edging about his cuffs, threatening to lay him by the heels for it, when far greater faults in others were winked at.
a Funcc. Chron. ex Massei, xviii.