4 For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.



Ver. 4. For there are certain men] Not worthy to be named, as that rich glutton, Luk_16:19.



Crept in unawares] ðáñåéóåäõóáí , stealing their passage, and making as if they minded nothing less. Thus Socrates (the writer of the Ecclesiastical History) was a close Novatian, as the learned Jacobus Billius observeth; he favoureth that heresy all along his history, sed ita oblique, ut minus perspicaci Lectori non tam dolori suo atque irae obsequi quam veritatis rationem habere videatur, but he doth it so cunningly, that a man would think he did it out of pure regard to the truth. (Observat. Sacrar. i. 26.) So Spondanus, the epitomizer of Baronius, drinks to his readers the pernicious poison of Hildebrand’s heresies, quasi aliud agens, as if he intended no such matter.



Ordained to this] Gr. ðñïãåãñáììåíïé , written down, enrolled, set down in the black bill.



Turning the grace of our God] Gr. ìåôáôéèåìåíïé , translating it from its proper end, perverting it, by arguing from mercy to liberty, which is the devil’s logic. Corruptio optimi est pessima. The corruption of the best is the worst. Learned men have conceived, saith Plutarch, that as of oxen, being dead and rotten, there breed bees, of horses wasps, of asses beetles; so men’s bodies, when the marrow melteth and gathereth together, do bring forth serpents. The grace of God, if turned into wantonness, becometh the "savour of death unto death."