Then came to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not?
Ver. 14. Then came to him the disciples of John] These sided with the Pharisees against our Saviour out of emulation and self-love, the bane and break neck of all true love; yea, they were first in the quarrel. A doleful thing, when brethren shall set against brethren, Hebrews vex one another, Exodus 2:13; and Christians, as if they wanted enemies, fly in the faces of one another. St Basil was held a heretic, even of them that held the same things as he did, and whom he honoured as brethren; all the fault was that he outshone them, and they envied him the praise he had for opposing Arianism, which was such, as that Philostorgius the Arian wrote that all the other orthodox divines were but babies to Basil. How hot was the contention between Luther and Carolostadius, merely out of a self-seeking humour and desire of pre-eminence. How extremely violent are the Lutherans against the Calvinists. In the year 1567 they joined themselves at Antwerp with the Papists against the Calvinists. And Luther somewhere professeth that he will rather yield to transubstantiation than remit anything of consubstantiation. a
Why do ye and the Pharisees fast often] The Pharisees were parlous fasters, when they devoured widows' houses, and swallowed ill-gotten goods as gnats down their wide gullets, which therefore Christ calls ενοντα, the inwards. Their fasts were mere mock fasts. So were those of John, Archbishop of Constantinople, surnamed the Faster, who yet was the first that affected the title of universal bishop, so much cried down by Gregory the Great. These Pharisees had sided with and set on John's disciples in their master's absence; like the renegade Jesuits, to keep up that bitter contention that is between the Calvinists and Lutherans, have a practice of running over to the Lutheran Church, pretending to be converts, and to build with them.
a The conversion in the Eucharist of the whole substance of the bread into the body and of the wine into the blood of Christ, only the appearances (and other ‘accidents') of bread and wine remaining: according to the doctrine of the Roman Church. Distinguished from consubstantiation, in which the elements of the bread and wine are held to coexist with the body and blood of Christ. ŒD