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As if the apostle had said, "I can bear them witness that many, very many, of the Jews, have a zealous desire in their way to please God, and do what is acceptable in his sight; but though it be a warm, it is but a blind zeal, and not according to right knowledge."
Here observe, 1. The apostle is desirous to say the best he could of his countrymen the Jews; he commends the good meaning of their zeal, but blames the ill conduct of it. It was a misguided and mistaken zeal, and not directed as it ought. Zeal is either one of the best or worst of things in the world. It is a good thing when it is right in its object, right in the measure and degree, and pursued by right means. As to the object of our zeal, it must be that which is certainly and considerably good: certainly good, or else we are zealous for we know not what; and considerably good, or else it doth not deserve our zeal. To be zealous, and that beyond all due measure, for the observation so a ceremony or custom, as some in the Christian church were of old about the observation of Easter, is certainly a zeal not according to knowledge.
Again, zeal must be prosecuted by lawful and warrantable means; we must not from a principle of zeal do any evil, that good may come. But there is a zeal amongst the church of Rome, which I am sure cannot be according to knowledge, and that is a zeal for ignorance. This is a zeal peculiar to themselves; they will not allow the people to understand what they do in the service of God; they require them to pray, but will not let them know what they pray for; and all this under a pretence that ignorance, which makes a man a block, is the mother of devotion. As if the less men understand the service of God, the better he was pleased with it, and the more they were edified by it.