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The next sin charged upon these seducers is pride and ostentation, they speak big, great swelling words of vanity; with a lofty and affected style they propound their false doctrines to amuse the simple. It is the usual practice of seducers to speak in an high-flown strain of words, that, being not understood, they may be the more admired.
Next they allure to their party such novice Christians who had left the Heathenish bestiality, and made an outward profession of the Christian religion. The word rendered to allure, is a metaphor taken from fishers or fowlers, who produce the bait or shrape, but hide the net or snare. Seducers bait their hook with such baits as are proper to the fish they would catch, else they are no good anglers.
But observe, why the bait is here before us, it is liberty, it is licentiousness, they allure through the lusts of the flesh; no bait like this.
Learn hence, That the true reason why seducers have so many followers is this, because their doctrine is libertinism, and most agreeable to the carnal lusts and corrupt affections of men. This is the true reason why Popery has had so many proselytes; they allure through the lusts of the flesh. Never was a religion better calculated for gratifying men's beastly lusts than Popery; it indulges a liberty to all abominable lusts and unchristian practices, yet after all will blanch over wilful violations of God's laws with the favourable title of venial crimes. Sit anima mea cum philosophis: Let my soul, at the great day, be rather found among the sober Heathen philosophers, than among sensual and brutish Christians.