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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadWilliam Burkitt Notes and Observations - Revelation 22:18 - 22:18
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Here we have a dreadful commination and severe threatening denounced by Christ against all such as shall add any thing to the scriptures in general, and to this prophecy in particular; not by way of true interpretation, but either formally, by joining any thing to be received as scripture which God never revealed to be such; or virtually, by putting such a sense and meaning upon scripture as God never intended, and the words cannot rationally bear.
Almighty God here declares, that he will add to such his plagues, and shut them out of the holy city, the New Jerusalem, the kingdom of heaven: and if so, learn we what great guilt the church of Rome contracts, and what a dreadful curse she lies under, by making oral tradition of equal authority with the scriptures, and by adding new articles of faith, new points of doctrine: which is, in effect, to accuse God of ignorance or inadvertency.
True, the doctrine of christianity is a tradition; it was delivered by Christ to the apostles, and by the apostles to their successors; but now they being long since dead, we cannot receive from them the doctrine of life by word of mouth, but must stick to the scriptures or written word, for these things were written for our sake. But if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.
We reject not all traditions, because scripture itself is a tradition; but we blame the church of Rome, and deservedly sure, for making her private unwritten traditions of equal authority with the scriptures, and for urging that they ought to be received apri pietatis affectu, with the same pious affection with which we receive the holy scriptures.
And thus they set their post by God's post, and equal their traditions with the doctrines of faith: thier opinion is bad, but their practice is worse; for they value their own traditions above the scriptures, and prefer them before the scriptures; they never called their own traditions " a nose of wax, and dead letter, a dumb rule, an obscure doctrine;" but in this manner have they stigmatized the holy scriptures; and how they will escape Christ's severe commination here before us, for adding to, and taking from, the word of God, concerns them to look to it; for they must certainly answer for it at the bar of God.