Matthew 23:25-28 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter… Hypocrites seem as glow-worms, to have both light and heat; but touch them and they have neither. The Egyptian temples were beautiful on the outside, when within ye should find nothing but some serpent or crocodile. Apothecaries' boxes oft have goodly titles when yet they hold not one dram of any good drug. A certain stranger coming on embassage unto the senators of Rome, and colouring his hoary hair and pale cheeks with vermilion hue, a grave senator espying the deceit stood up and said, "What sincerity are we to expect from this man's hands, whose locks, and looks, and lips, do lie?" Think the same of-all painted hypocrites. These we may compare(as Lucian doth his Grecians) to a fair gilt bossed book; look within it, and there is the tragedy of Thyestes; or perhaps Arrius' Thalya; the name of a muse, the matter heresy; or Conradus Vorstius' book-monster that hath De Deo in the front, but atheism and blasphemy in the text. (J. Trapp.) Parallel Verses KJV: Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. |
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