For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.
Ver. 18. But their own bellies] They pretend the service of Christ to their worldly and wicked respects, by a dissembled sanctity, which is double iniquity. The Duke of Bavaria is even eaten up with those Popish flesh flies, friars and Jesuits. It was an honest complaint of a Popish writer, We, saith he, handle the Scriptures, tantum ut nos pascat et vestiat, only for a livelihood; we serve God for gain: as children will not say their prayers unless they be promised their breakfasts. Cajetan writing on Matthew 5:13; "Ye are the salt of the earth," confesseth ingenuously of himself and his fellow prelates, that whereas by their places they should have been the salt of the earth, they had lost their savour, and were good for little else but looking after the rites and revenues of the Church. a And such were many of our English prelates grown, before their late extirpation. If you put not into the mouths of these Cerberuses, they would even prepare war against you. Therefore their "sun went down, and the day grew dark over them,"Micah 3:5,6. All seducers are self-seekers: "they teach things that they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake," Titus 1:11. They are like eagles that soar aloft towards heaven, not for any love of heaven, but that they may spy their prey the sooner, seize upon it the better: or like those ravens in Arabia, that, fully gorged, have a tunable sweet record; but empty, they screech horribly. In parabola oves capras suas quaerunt, comparison to a sheep seeking their nanny-goat, as the ferryman looks one way, rows another.
And by good words, &c.] Those locusts in the Revelation have faces like women, insinuative and flattering. The Valentinian heretics had an art to persuade before they taught, whereas the truth persuadeth by teaching, it doth not teach by persuading. (Tertullian.)
They deceive] As cheaters do, by the cogging of a dye, εν τη κυβεια, Ephesians 4:14. Fallax artificium, vel potius artifex fallacia, saith Erasmus on that text, a cumfing kind of cozenage.
a Evanuimus ac ad nihilum utiles, nisi ad externas ceremonias, externaque bona.