If we have forgotten the name of our God, or stretched out our hands to a strange god;
Ver. 20. If we have forgotten the name of our God] i.e. Foregone our religion, as renegadoes, denying the Lord that bought us. In the time of the Maccabees many defected to Paganism; Demas, forsaking Paul, became an idolatrous priest at Thessalonica, saith Dorotheus; Julian turned Pagan; Damascen, Mahometan, as some write; Harding, an obstinate Papist. In the Palatinate, when, not forty years since, taken by the Spaniard, scarce one man in twenty stood out, but fell to Popery, as fast as leaves fall in antumn.
Or stretched out our hands to a strange god] This Ignatius, Laurentius, and thousands of those primitive Christians would die, rather than be drawn to do. So the three children, the seven brethren, &c. Origen, for yielding a little, was excommunicated.