Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble [is like] a broken tooth, and a foot out of joint.
Ver. 19. Confidence in an unfaithful man, &c.] In a prevaricator, a covenant breaker, a perfidious person, such as Ahithophel was to David; Job's miserable comforters to him - he compares them to the brooks of Tema, Job 6:16,19, in a moisture they swelled, in a drought they failed; Egypt to Israel, "a staff or broken reed, whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand and pierce it"; Isa 36:6 the Roman senate to Julius Caesar, whom they killed in the council chamber with twenty-three wounds, and this was done a pluribus amicis quam inimicis quorum non expleverat spes inexplebiles saith Seneca, a by most of his pretended friends whose unreasonable hopes he had not satisfied. How good is it therefore to try before we trust: yea, to trust none that are not true to God! David dared not repose upon Saul's fair promises, whom he knew to be moody and slippery. The French say in their proverb, When the Spaniard comes to parle of peace, then double bolt the door. The Hollanders make no conditions with the Spaniard, whom they know to hold that Machiavellian heresy - Fides tam diu servanda est quamdiu expediat - but such as are made at sea and sealed with great ordnance. Calvin and other Protestant divines were called to the Council of Trent, but dared not venture thither, quia me vestigia terrent, as the fox in the fable said: they had not forgot how John Huss, and Jerome of Prague sped at the Council of Constance, although they had the emperor's safe conduct. They knew that Turks and Papists concur in this, as they do in many other tenets, That there is no faith to be kept with dogs - that is, with Christians, as Turks understand it, with heretics, as Papists.
a Seneca, De Ira, lib. iii.