But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Ver. 7. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees] Two leading sects among the Jews, but notable hypocrites, yet pressing to the ordinances. (Joseph. B. J.; Ant. Jdg 13:17) A Doeg may set his foot as far within the sanctuary as a David, and let him. He may be caught, as those warrant officers sent to apprehend our Saviour, as Saul's messengers coming to Naioth were turned from executioners to prophets. "Come" (saith Latimer) "to the holy assemblies, though thou comest to sleep; for God, perhaps, may take thee napping."
He said unto them, O generatian of vipers] Or adders, which are outwardly specious, inwardly poisonous: so are all hypocrites a mere outside, but God will wash off their paint with rivers of brimstone. Of the viper it is said, that when he hath stung a man he makes haste to the water, and drinks, or dies for it. So did these Pharisees to baptism, hoping by the work done to avoid the wrath to come. But a man may go to hell with baptismal water on his face, unless with the water of baptism he have grace to quench the fiery darts of the devil: as that holy virgin, whereof Luther reports, that she beat back Satan's temptations with this only argument, I am a Christian. a The enemy quickly understood (saith he) the virtue of baptism, and the value of that vow, and fled from her. There are those who boast and bear themselves bold on their Christendom; but hath not many a ship, that hath been named Safeguard and Goodspeed, miscarried at sea, or fallen into the hands of pirates. This generation of vipers conceited themselves to be Abraham's seed: so do many of the serpent's seed today, because of their baptism; but all in vain, unless they walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, Romans 4:12. The old serpent hath stung them, neither is there any antidote for such but the flesh (not of the biting viper, but) of the slain Messiah, foreshadowed by the brazen serpent. See Isaiah 27:1. God hath promised to break for us the serpent's head, who hath so deeply set his stings in us; yea, with his sore and great and strong sword, to punish Leviathan, that piercing serpent, and to slay the dragon that is in the sea.
Who hath forewarned you] Who hath privily and underhandedly, as it were, shown you (υπεδειξεν, clanculum indicavit et admonuit), and set you in a course of avoiding the danger that hangs over your heads as by a twined thread? The wrath of God is revealed from heaven, and hell hath enlarged herself, and even gapes for you: who gave an inkling thereof, and sent you hither for help? &c.
From the wrath to come] Called the damnation of hell, Matthew 23:33, which hath torments without end and past imagination. For "who knoweth the power of thine anger?" saith David. "Even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath," Psalms 90:1; that is, as I conceive it, let a man fear thy wrath never so much, he is sure to feel a fair deal more thereof than ever he could have feared. When but a drop of God's displeasure lights upon a poor soul in this present world, what intolerable pain is it put to! "The spirit of a man may sustain his infirmity," saith Solomon, Proverbs 18:14, q.d. some sorry shift a man may make to rub through an outward affliction, and to bear it off by head and shoulders, "but a wounded spirit who can bear?" q.d. the stoutest cannot possibly stand under it: there is no proportion between the back and the burden; it is able to crush and crack the mightiest among us. Judas chose a halter rather than to endure it: and well he might, when as Job (with whom God was but in jest, in comparison) preferred strangling and any death before such a life, Job 7:15. But all this, alas, is but present wrath, and nothing at all to the "wrath to come," a phrase of speech that involves and carries in it stings and horrors, woe, and, alas, flames of wrath and the worm that never dieth, trembling and gnashing of teeth, seas of vengeance, rivers of brimstone, unutterable and insufferable tortures and torments. We read of racking, roasting, hanging, stoning, putting men under harrows of iron and saws of iron, scratching off their flesh with thorns of the wilderness, pulling their skins over their ears, and other exquisite and unheard of miseries that men have here been put unto; -but ετυμπανισθησαν , Heb 11:35 what is all this to the wrath to come? not so much as a flea biting, as a prick with a pin, or smart blow with a finger; no, though a man should go through a thousand cruel deaths every hour his whole life throughout. Oh, bless and kiss that blessed Son of God that bore for us the brunt of this insupportable wrath, even "Jesus that delivered us from the wrath to come," 1 Thessalonians 1:10; and shun sin, that draws hell at the heels of it. Is it nothing to lose an immortal soul, to purchase an everliving death?
a Legitur de quadam sancta virgine quae quoties tentabatur, non nisi baptismo suo repugnabat, dicens brevissime, Christiana sum. Intellexit enim hostis statim virtutem baptismi et fidei, et fugit ab ea.