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Mic_3:5 Thus saith the LORD concerning the prophets that make my people err, that bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace; and he that putteth not into their mouths, they even prepare war against him.
Ver. 5. Thus saith the Lord concerning the prophets] False prophets, who pretended Divine authority, when as God never sent them, but expressly declareth here against them, and threateneth them. Those profane princes had their fleshflies, those court parasites, to soothe and smooth them up in their sins; to promise them peace, albeit they walked in the imagination of their own hearts, "to add drunkenness to thirst," and to live as they wanted, Deu_29:19. Mirifica est sympathia inter Magnates et parasites, saith Bucholcer. There is a strange sympathy between great men and clawbacks: nothing so troublesome to such as truth, nothing so toothsome as flattery: this is the fruit of sinful selflove; and the end thereof are the ways of death Pro_16:25.
That make my people to err] That seduce them and carry them out of the right way into bypaths and blind thickets of error, where they are lost for ever, Deu_13:18. Seducers are said to draw men violently, áðïóôáí , Act_20:30, or to thrust them onward. Jeroboam is said to have "driven Israel from following the Lord"; and the false apostles to drag disciples after them, Act_20:29-30, compelling them, by their persuasions, to embrace those distorted doctrines that cause convulsions of conscience.
That bite with their teeth] The dogs of Congo bite though they bark not, saith Mr Purchas (Pilgr. of Religion): there are a sort of cur dogs, saith another, that suck a man’s blood only with licking (Christ’s Politician, by The. Scot). Seducers are such: "Beware of false prophets for they come to you in sheep’s clothing; but inwardly they are ravening wolves." And in this sense Jerome and Theodoret take this text: they devour those they make prize of, as the apostle’s word signifieth, óõëáãùãåéí , Col_2:8. Others think their covetousness and gormandise is noted.
“ O Monachi, vestri stomachi sunt amphora Bacchi:
Vos estis, Deus est testis, certissima pestis. ”
As hungry dogs they snap at a crust, and make clean work, such is their voracity and unsatisfiableness.
“ Ingluvies, et tempestas, barathrumque macelli. ”
And cry, Peace] Páíôá êáëùò åóôáé . All shall be as well as heart can wish or need require. Let these Cerberuses {a} but be morselled and you shall hear no worse of them. Like they are to the ravens of Arabia, that, full gorged, have a tuneably sweet record, but empty, screech horribly. Si veatri bene si lateri, as Epicurus saith in Horace; Let their bellies be filled and their backs fitted, and they will prophesy all good to you: as those false prophets, nourished by Jezebel, did to Ahab; as the Pharisees cried up to the centurion, who had built them a synagogue, Luk_7:5; as the Popish clergy canonize their benefactors, and extol them to the skies. Wulfin, Bishop of Sherborn, displaced secular priests and put in monks. Hence the monkish writers make him a very holy man, and report of him, that when he lay dying he cried out suddenly, "I see the heavens open and Jesus Christ standing at the right hand of God," and so died. Yea, they had a trick to make their images speak their minds this way. As the cross of grace here in England had a man within it enclosed with a hundred wires to make the image goggle with the eyes, nod with the head, hang the lip, move and shake his jaws, according as the value was of the gift that was offered. If it were a small piece of silver, he would hang a frowning lip; if a piece of gold, then should his jaws go merrily. This idolatrous forgery was at last, by Cromwell’s means, disclosed, and the image, with all his engines, showed openly at Paul’s Cross, and there torn in pieces by the people who had been so seduced (Acts and Mon. fol. 1084).
And he that putteth not into their mouths, they even prepare war against him] Heb. sanctify a war, id est, excommunicatis aqua et igni interdicunt, crucem adversus eos praedicant, they thunder against them, and throw them out of the Church: publish their crusades, as they did against the Waldenses in France, the Hussites in Bohemia, and Luther in Germany, whom the Pope excommunicated, the emperor proscribed, various divines wrote against: the reason whereof, when Erasmus was asked by the Elector of Saxony, he rightly answered, Because he meddleth with the Pope’s triple crown and with the friar’s fat paunches.
{a} In Greek and Latin mythology the proper name of the watch dog which guarded the entrance of the infernal regions, represented as having three heads. ŒD