Jewish doctors had their schools or followers; and as we speak of Pythagoreans and Platonists, so the Jews speak of the schools of Hillel and Schammai, and other ancient doctors, among whom there was a general agreement, though in minor points, which, however, their disciples magnified into importance, they differed in opinion. Tradition, mapadoσis, ap, cabbala," in its general sense, is any thing taught, or delivered down from one to another; and that which bore that appellation in our Lord's time was entirely oral, and was supposed to contain the opinions and decisions of the wise in different ages, as to the import and interpre tation of what might be obscure in the law and customs of Moses. It originated, doubtless, in a better age, and was then probably confined to a few practical particulars; but as false opinions, superstitions, and other corruptions prevailed, it swelled to vast extent, and not only descended to the invention and regulation of a vast number of particulars of ceremonial observance, but, what was still worse, brought in a subtle casuistry to explain away the meaning of many moral precepts, and to palliate and give sanction to bad principles and a vicious practice. As these traditions also embodied many things, not only explanatory of the law, but supplementary to it, the Pharisees at length raised them above their original character, when they existed in a simple form, as the mere opinions of wise men, and pretended that they were delivered by God verbally to Moses, so that he received, not only a written, but also an oral law, which was from him transinitted to their elders in successive ages. These traditions, or at least many of them, were collected in the Misnah, by Rabbi Judah, A.D. 180. The extravagant and even impious authority given by the scribes and Pharisees to their traditions, appears from numerous extracts given by Lightfoot, Schoetgenius, Gill, and others, from their later Rabbins. Two instances from the Babylonian Talmud will be sufficient for illustration: "Know then that the words of the scribes are more lovely than the words of the law; weightier are the words

of the elders than the words of the prophets." "My son, attend to the words of the scribes more than to the words of the law; every one that transgresses the words of the scribes is guilty of death." How truly, therefore, did our Lord charge them with making "the word of God void through their tradition!" The Sadducees, however, rejected their traditions, as expositions of the written law. The mystical cabbala was distinct from these traditions, and was a mode of interpreting scripture by giving a meaning to parts of words, and even to the letters of which they are composed, either by considering the arithmetical value of a letter, or taking each letter of a word for an entire diction; or making up a word from the initial letters of many; or changing or transposing the letters of a word; and thus discovering, as the adepts dreamed, many important mysteries. This solemn trifling has been preferred by many of the most learned of the Jews, since the Christian era, to every other mode of exposition. How far it prevailed in our Lord's time, does not appear; but there was then a dogmatic cabbalism drawn out of the eastern and Greek pagan philosophy, which before that period considerably influenced the opinions of many of the more learned Jews. Not many traces of this, however, appear in the conversations of Christ as recorded in the Gospels.

They wash not their hands when they eat bread.-The washing of hands before taking any food was so important a matter with the Pharisees, that they appear to have been greatly offended that the example of Christ and his disciples should diminish in the minds of the people their reverence for this ceremony. How serious a matter they made of it, appears from their writers. Rabbi Jose says, Whoever eats bread without washing of hands is as if he committed whoredom." "He that blesseth food with unwashed hands is guilty of death." This custom, it is to be observed, was not one of cleanliness, but a matter of mere superstition; for, whether the hands needed cleansing or not, it was equally binding.

с

b

d

b Exod. xx. 12; Deut. v. 16.

Verse 3. Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God? &c.-The answer of our Lord is, in sum, If my disciples disregard the tradition of the elders, this is but a transgression against a commandment of MEN; but ye transgress even (for the rai is to be taken intensively) the commandment of God by your tradition. Thus he strikes at the foundation of the whole system of tradition, by stripping it at once of that authority which they had fabulously assigned to it; teaching that it was not only of men, but not always of wise or good men, since in several instances it stood in sinful opposition to the divine law, and was therefore in no case worthy of respect.

.כבר plied in the Hebrew word

Verse 4. Honour thy father and mother. -In this duty our Lord includes affording support to parents, which indeed is imThis command of God could not be denied by the Pharisees: it had been written by the finger of God; it was "the first command with promise;" and by themselves it was understood not merely of respect and reverence to parents, and cheerful obedience to all their lawful commands, but also of the duty of honouring them with substance, of feeding, clothing, and supplying their wants with liberality and tender affection. Thus their own writers call this"the weightiest commandment among weighty ones;" and by the Jewish canons a son is bound "to afford his father meat, drink, and clothing, to lead him in and

out, and to wash his hands and feet." Their law was also severe against cursing father or mother, that is, reviling them, or using reproachful and disrespectful language, kaтaλoyia, to them, against which heinous crime the penalty of death was denounced, Exodus xxi. 17; so that the import and strictness of the divine law on this point could not be mistaken. Nor does it appear that the Jews in general were chargeable with any general infraction of this duty, except in the case where the wretched, selfish, and infecting sophistry of the Pharisaic tradition interposed, and which, therefore, our Lord selects in order to maintain his charge against them.

Verses 5,6. It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me.-St. Mark expresses it, "It is corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me, and ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or mother." The word corban signifies a sacred gift or offering, from 17p, to offer; and from hence the treasury of the temple was called kopẞavov, as the depositary of the consecrated or devoted offerings. Such gifts were unalienable, and could not be diverted to any other use. The word corban was therefore used in vowing or dedicating any thing to a sacred or supposed sacred use, and had the import of a solemn oath; for to say, Corban, or, Let it be corban, or, as corban, effectually

10

e Isaiah xxix. 13.

prohibited any thing from private use or advantage. The Pharisees therefore held, that when application was made by a parent to a son for relief, and he should say, "Corban whatever thou mightest be profited by me," he was released from his obligation to the fifth commandment, and might without blame leave his parents to poverty and wretchedness; and this was probably done from that rapacity which our Lord so frequently rebukes in them, by which they encouraged the alienation of property to the temple, or probably often to their own use, under pretence of receiving honour on account of their sanctity, from those superstitious persons upon whose credulity they practised. To these vows the parties who made them were held to be bound in the strictest manner; and as they alienated to pretended pious uses that portion of their property by which their parents might have been sustained, "the tradition of the elders" most clearly rendered the commandment of God of none effect.

Our translators, both here and in Mark, have supposed an ellipsis, which they supply with, "he shall be free." Koinoel considers the ka before the ou un Tμnon redundant like the Hebrew and reads, "Whosoever shall say, It is a gift—he need not honour his father and mother." Bowyer takes a in the sense of therefore, and translates, "Therefore he must not relieve his father or mother." An ellipsis must, however, probably be understood; and our translation properly fills it up with the natural inference from the premises. He shall be free, he shall not be liable to the penalty. Verse 4.

f Mark vii. 14.

prophesy, &c.- Since, under pretence of piety, these wretched men devoured the substance of the poor, and caused their infatuated followers to violate the most solemn laws of God, they were in truth accurately described as hypocrites, acting their part in religion for gain, and personating a character to which they had no claim. The quotation from Isaiah cannot be considered as a mere adaptation of words addressed by the prophet to the Jews of his day; for our Lord expressly says, well or justly did Esaias PROPHESY OF YOU; and upon examining the section of prophecy from which the words are taken, it will appear evident that it has respect also to the times of Messiah, and ranks therefore in that class of predictions which have a primary and an ulterior application. The quotation very nearly agrees with the Septuagint, but differs in one clause from the present Hebrew text, which, however, may be interpreted to the same meaning. Of all will-worship, all self-devised schemes of piety, not authorized by the word of God, or comprising any thing contrary to its princi. ples, our Lord declares, In vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. The word rendered

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evlaλua is always in the New Testament joined with ανθρωπων ; and wherever it occurs is contrasted by implication with the precepts of God, which in the New Testament are never denominatedevτaλμala, but evloλai." All such worship is vain and fruitless; and not only unprofitable, but in its general tendency hurtful. As to every thing required of us, the word of God contains either particular directions, or general principles easily applicable to any given case; and, only as we have its authority, can we look with confidence to the divine acceptance. This shows the necessity of as simple a conformity to the word of God as possible in every thing connected with religious services, and ought to have guarded the church against all those attempts at improving upon the primitive examples contained in the New Testament, in order, as it has been pretended, to render the acts of worship more impressive and influential. But in the

Christian church, as in the Jewish, the gates were thrown open to a flood of ceremonial and superstitious observances, which produced in both hypocrisy, pride, bigotry, and often direct and flagrant wickedness. With the loss of simplicity came the loss of power; and in both, though the people "drew near to God with their mouth and honoured him with their lips," and that in a formal, exact, and pompous manner, the result was that "their heart was removed far from him." In all such cases religion degenerates into form, or mere sentimentalism, or superstition, or a mixture of all; and the minds of men, instead of being directly led to God, to seek communion with him, are detained amidst complex and varied services, which produce a self-righteous dependence, or are taken as a discharge from the obligations of holiness.

Verse 11. Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth, &c.—Our Lord addressed these words to the multitude in the presence of the Pharisees, who were malig. nantly observing him, and thus openly took them out of the hands of these fals

teachers, and instilled into their minds truth as solid and important, as their traditions were vain and trifling in every thing but their corrupting effect. Either he referred in what follows to the notion, that food eaten with unwashed hands defiled those who partook of it, and so this address to the multitude arose out of his conversation with the Pharisees; or he intended still further to expose the absurdity of their notions by showing the folly of the reason on which they made a distinction as to clean and unclean meats beyond the rule of the Jewish law. He might also thus tacitly intend to prepare his disciples, by the general principles he laid down on this occasion, for that general abolition of the Mosaic distinctions as to clean and unclean meats, which was to follow the full institution of his religion. The Jewish notion was, that a moral defilement arose from the use of certain prohibited food; so that forbidden meats "are unclean in themselves, and defile both body and soul." In this also moral and ceremonial distinctions were confounded; and when the partaking of certain food was regarded as a moral defilement, the abstinence from it was held, by a fair deduction, to be an important branch of righteousness, and thus the attention was turned from the state of the heart to external observances. To counteract this, our Lord declares to the multitude, in direct opposition to the Pharisaic doctrine, that not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man, renders him common, and unclean as the word signifies in opposition to holy; that no kind of meats and drinks assigned by God for the use of man, taken temperately, renders him offensive and odious to God, as though he had contracted guilt and pollution by committing sin; but that which cometh out of the mouth defileth a man. The expression is enigmatical, the mouth, in the second clause, signifying the HEART OF MAN; but the Pharisees sufficiently understood it to be offended with this saying, the meaning

g

of which he opens more fully to his disciples in a following verse.

Verses 13, 14. Every plant which my heavenly Father, &c.—Tela signifies the act of planting, but by transition a plant; and by a common metaphor, the opinions and affections of the human mind are compared to plants and fruits, springing up from the seeds which have been sown there by instruction. Here the plants are to be understood of the doctrines and precepts of the Pharisees; which, being opposed to the truths and laws of the Scriptures, are said not to have been planted by the Father, and therefore, whatever offence might be taken by Pharisees, and whatever might be the consequence of their rage, they were to be rooted up with unsparing hand. Truth can make no compromise with error, and it shall ultimately prevail. Innumerable are the seeds of error which have been sown in the church, and great and deleterious their product; but let none despair, the words of Christ are PROPHETIC as well as admonitory: every plant which springs not from heavenly seed, planted by the divine hand itself, shall be rooted up. By this general declaration the disciples were also taught their duty. Not indeed, when they became public teachers, to root up supposed error, as in later times, by civil coercion and violence; but, as they had an example in their Lord, by calm but most faithful and unsparing refutation. In this way no allowance was to be made for errors opposed to the clearly revealed decisions of the Father; but at all hazards they were to proclaim the truth, and to expose the unsoundness and the evil consequences of the er

h Luke vi. 39.

rors it was designed to displace and destroy. The force and instructiveness of this passage is lost by those who suppose our Lord refers to the destruction of the Pharisees themselves, by the judgments which were to come upon the Jewish nation.

Verse 14. Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind, &c.-Leave them; have done with them, because of their false and dangerous doctrines; renounce them as your teachers, for when one blind man leads another, both shall fall into the ditch. Our translation, Let them alone, is too weak; for Christ exhorts his disciples, and all who might be present, not merely not to trouble themselves about them, as to whether they were offended or not, as some understand the words, but the proverbial and figurative mode of speech which follows shows that he enjoins an entire renunciation and disallowance of them as religious guides. These professedly learned instructers were themselves ignorant of the true way of salvation; and for any to place their souls under their charge would be an act of infatuation as fatal as that of blind persons putting themselves under the guidance of the blind to be led along a dangerous road.

Both shall fall into the ditch.—To fall into a ditch, conveys the idea of sustaining only a trifling inconvenience or injury, whereas our Lord intended to intimate danger of the highest kind. Both shall fall into the PIT, better conveys the idea; and Boluvov is to be understood as the image of eternal perdition: so strongly does our Lord guard us here, as well as in his sermon on the mount, against erring