Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
Ver. 15. Beware of false prophets, which come to you, &c.] This is another dangerous rock, that the less careful may easily split against. Take heed, therefore, lest while ye shun a shelf ye fall not into a whirlpool. By corrupt teachers Satan catcheth men, as a cunning fisher by one fish catcheth another, that he may feed upon both. He circuiteth the world, seeketh whom to devour, and usually beginneth with violence and cruelty. If this take not, then he puts off the frock of a wolf, and makes his next encounter in sheep's clothing. Now what havoc he hath made by this means of silly souls laden with lusts, who knows not? The old Church was pestered with false prophets,Deuteronomy 13:1; 2 Peter 2:1. There were false prophets among the people, and there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, and many shall follow their pernicious ways. This was Peter's prophecy; and Paul saith the same, Acts 20:30 : Grievous wolves shall enter in among you (in sheep's clothing you must think), speaking perverse things (while they pervert the Scriptures to the defence of their own devices), to draw away (αποσπαν) disciples after them. The word signifieth to pull them limb meal, as wolves use to do the sheep they seize upon. A like expression there is, Deuteronomy 13:13, where these naughty men are said to thrust or drive away folk from the true God, as Jeroboam is said to have driven Israel from following the Lord, 2 Kings 17:21. This they do, not so much by cruelty as by craft, by force as by fraud; "deceitful workers," St Paul calls them, "transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ," and ministers of righteousness, "and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple" and overly credulous,2 Corinthians 11:13; Romans 16:18. This they have learned of the devil, that grand magician, who can soon transform himself into an angel of light. St John in his First Epistle tells us of many petty antichrists, even then gone out, 1 John 4:1, who professing Christ's name did yet oppose his truth. And in his Revelation, that the beast, which is the great antichrist, hath two horns like the lamb's, but speaks like the dragon, Revelation 13:11. The locusts also, which are his limbs and agents, have faces like women, insinuative and flattering. Tertullian tells us that the Valentinian heretics had a trick to persuade before they taught, whereas the truth persuadeth by teaching, doth not teach by persuading. And how much hurt Julian the Apostate did by this art in the Church of God is better known than that I need here to relate it. a It was not therefore without good ground of reason that Placilla the empress, when Theodosius senior desired to confer with Eumonius the heretic, dissuaded her husband very earnestly; lest being perverted by his speeches, he might fall into heresy. She knew their cunning, and, as it were, cheaping at dice,Ephesians 4:14, where the apostle compareth seducers to cheaters and false gamesters, who have a device, by cheating at dice, to deceive the unskilful; and further telleth us, that they are wittily wicked by methods and crafty conveyances, winding up and down, and turning every way, to get the greatest advantage. b Neither was that good empress ignorant how catching we are this way, and inclinable to the worse side. As the Israelites soon forgot their God, and called for a calf, as the ten tribes were easily prevailed with to go after the two golden calves, and as the whole world wondered and wandered after the beast. This to prevent, as much as may be, God in delivering the law is most large in the second and fourth commandments, which we are most apt to transgress; that by superstition, this by profaneness.
a Abduxit a fide plures Iuliani versutia, quam antecedentium omnium Ethnicorum praeceps saevitia.
b εν τη κυβεια, Quod verbum ductum est a lusu tesserarum. Erasm. την μεθοδειαν της πλανης, Ibid. Ingeniosi sunt methodici.