In these verses we have eight woes levelled directly against the scribes and Pharisees by our Lord Jesus Christ, like so many claps of thunder, or flashes of lightning, from mount Sinai, ver. 3. The gospel has its woes as well as the law; and gospel curses are of all curses the heaviest.

Now, each of these woes against the scribes and Pharisees has a reason annexed to it, containing a separate crime charged upon them, proving their hypocrisy, and justifying the judgment of Christ upon them; for his woes, his curses, are never causeless.

I. They were sworn enemies to the gospel of Christ-and consequently, to the salvation of the souls of men (ver. 13),—They shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; that is, they did all they could to keep people from believing in Christ, and so entering into his kingdom. Christ came to open the kingdom of heaven; that is, to lay open for us a new and living way into it-to bring men to be subjects of that kingdom. Now the scribes and Pharisees, who sat in Moses' seat, and pretended to the key of knowledge, ought to have contributed their assistance herein, by opening those Scriptures of the Old Testament which pointed at the Messiah and his kingdom, in their true and proper sense. Thus they might have facilitated that great work, and have helped thousands to heaven; but instead of this, they shut up the kingdom of heaven. They made it their business to press the ceremonial law, which was now in the vanishing; to suppress the prophecies, which were now in the accomplishing; and to beget and nourish up in the minds of the people prejudices against Christ and his doctrine.

II. They made religion and the form of godliness a cloak to their covetous practices and desires, ver. 14. Observe here what their wicked practices were; they devoured widows' houses, either by quartering themselves and their attendants upon them for entertainment, which must be of the best for men of their figure; or by insinuating themselves into their affections, and so getting to be the trustees of their estates, which they could make an easy prey of; for who could presume to call such as they were to an account? The thing they aimed at was to enrich themselves; and, this being their chief and highest end, all considerations of justice and equity were laid aside, and even widows' houses were sacrificed to this. The cloak with which they covered this wicked practice was as follows:-For a pretence they made long prayers; very long indeed, if it be true which some of the Jewish writers tell us, that they spent three hours at a time in the formalities of meditation and prayer, and did it thrice every day, which is more than an upright soul, that makes a conscience of being inward with God in the duty, dares pretend ordinarily to do; but to the Pharisees it was easy enough, who never made a business of the duty, and always made a trade of the outside of it. Christ doth not here condemn long prayers, as in themselves hypocritical; nay, there were not a great appearance of good in them, they would not have been used for a pretence; and the cloak must be very thick which was used to cover such wicked practices. Christ himself continued all night in prayer to God, and we are commanded to pray without ceasing too soon; where there are many sins to be confessed, and many wants to pray for the supply of, and many mercies to give thanks for, there is occasion for long prayers. But the Pharisees' long prayers were made up of vain repetitions, and (which was the end of them) they were for a pretence; by them they got the reputation of pious devout men, that loved prayer, and were the favourites of Heaven. The pretences of religion, with which hypocrites disguise or excuse their sin now, will aggravate their condemnation shortly. Therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Such is the deceit fulness of sin, that the very thing by which sinners hope to expiate and atone for their sins wil come against them, and make their sins more exceedingly sinful.

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III. While they were such enemies to the conversion of souls to Christianity, they were very indus trious in the perversion of them to their faction. They shut up the kingdom of heaven against thos that would turn to Christ, but at the same time compassed sea and land to make proselytes to themselves, ver. 15.

The making of proselytes, if it be to the truth and serious godliness, and be done with a good design, is a good work, well worthy of the utmost care and pains. Such is the value of souls, tha nothing must be thought too much to do, to save a soul from death. The industry of the Pharisee herein may show the negligence of many who would be thought to act from better principles, bu will be at no pains or cost to propagate the gospel. To make a proselyte, sea and land must b compassed; all ways and means must be tried; first one way, and then another, must be tried, a little enough; but all well paid, if the point be gained. But while they showed industry in makin proselytes, they showed impiety in abusing them when they were made; "Ye make him the discipl of a Pharisee presently, and he sucks in all a Pharisee's notions; ye make him twofold more th child of hell than yourselves." Hypocrites, while they fancy themselves heirs of heaven, are, in th judgment of Christ, the children of hell. Though all that maliciously oppose the gospel are childre of hell, yet some are twofold more so than others. Perverted proselytes are commonly the greate bigots; the scholars outdid their masters in fondness of ceremony, and in fury against Christianity

IV. Their seeking their own worldly gain and honour more than God's glory put them upon the coining of false and unwarrantable distinctions, with which they led the people into dangerous mistakes, particularly in the matter of oaths. They allowed swearing by creatures, provided they were consecrated to the service of God, and stood in any special relation to him. They allowed swearing by the temple and the altar, though they were the work of men's hands, intended to be the servants of God's honour, not sharers in it. An oath is an appeal to God, to his omniscience and justice; and to make this appeal to any creature, is to put that creature in the place of God. See Deut. vi. 13. They distinguished between an oath by the temple and an oath by the gold of the temple; an oath by the altar and an oath by the gift upon the altar; making the latter binding, but not the former. Here was a double wickedness; First, That there were some oaths which they dispensed with, and made light of, and reckoned a man was not bound by to assert the truth, or perform a promise. They ought not to have sworn by the temple or the altar; but, when they had so sworn, they were taken in the words of their mouth. That doctrine cannot be of the God of truth which gives countenance to the breach of faith in any case whatsoever. Oaths are edge tools, and are not to be jested with. Secondly, That they preferred the gold before the temple, and the gift before the altar, to encourage people to bring gifts to the altar, and gold to the treasures of the temple, which they hoped to be gainers by. Corrupt church-guides make things to be sin or no sin as it serves their purposes, and lay a much greater stress on that which concerns their own gain than on that which is for God's glory and the good of souls.

Christ shows the folly and absurdity of this distinction (vers. 17-19),-Ye fools, and blind. To convict them of folly, he appeals to themselves,- Whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifies the gold? the gift, or the altar that sanctifies the gift? Any one will own, that, on account of which any thing is qualified in a particular way, must itself be much more qualified in the same way. They that sware by the gold of the temple had an eye to it as holy; but what was it that made it holy but the holiness of the temple, to the service of which it was appropriated? And therefore the temple cannot be less holy than the gold, but must be more so; for the less is blessed and sanctified of the better. Heb. vii. 7. The temple and altar were dedicated to God fixedly, the gold and gift but secondarily. Christ is our altar (Heb. xiii. 10), our temple (John ii. 21); for it is he that sanctifies all our gifts, and puts an acceptableness in them. 1 Pet. ii. 5. Those that put their own works into the place of Christ's righteousness in justification are guilty of the Pharisees' absurdity, who preferred the gift before the altar.

He proceeds to rectify the mistake (vers. 20-22), by reducing all the oaths they had invented to the true intent of an oath, which is, By the name of the Lord: so that though an oath by the temple, or the altar, or heaven, be formally bad, yet it is binding. Engagements which ought not to have been made, are yet, when made, binding. A man shall never take advantage of his own fault.

V. They were very strict and precise in the smaller matters of the law, but as careless and loose in the weighter matters, vers. 23, 24. They were partial in the law (Mal. ii. 9),—would pick and choose their duty, according as they were interested or stood affected. Sincere obedience is universal, and he that from a right principle obeys any of God's precepts, will have respect to them all. Psal. cxix. 6. But hypocrites, who act in religion for themselves, and not for God, will do no more in religion than they can serve a turn by for themselves.

VI. They were all for the outside, and not at all for the inside, of religion. They were more desirous and solicitous to appear pious to men than to approve themselves so toward God. This is illustrated by two similitudes. 1. They are compared to a vessel that is clean washed on the outside, but all foul within, vers. 25, 26. The Pharisees placed religion in that which at best was but a point of decency-the washing of cups, &c. Mark vii. 4. They were in care to eat their meat in clean cups and platters; but made no conscience of getting their meat by extortion, and using it to excess. In those things which fell under the observation of their neighbours, they seemed very exact, and carried on their wicked intrigues with so much artifice, that their wickedness was not suspected; people generally took them for very good men. But within, in the recesses of their hearts, and the close retirements of their lives, they were full of extortion and excess, of violence and incontinence; that is of injustice and intemperance. While they would seem to be godly, they were neither sober nor righteous. Their inward part was very wickedness (Psal. v. 9); and that we are really which we are inwardly. Christ gives, in opposition to this practice, a rule, ver. 26. The rule is, Cleanse first that which is within. The principal care of every one of us should be, to wash our hearts from wickedness. Jer. iv. 14. The main business of a Christian lies within-to get cleansed from the filthiness of the spirit. Corrupt affections and inclinations, the secret lusts that lurk in the soul unseen and unobserved, these must first be mortified and subdued. Those sins must be conscientiously abstained from which the eye of God only is a witness to, who searchetn B b

the heart. Cleanse first that which is within. Not that only, but that first; because, if due care be taken concerning that, the outside will be clean also. If the heart be well kept, all is well-for out of it are the issues of life; the eruptions will vanish of course. If the heart and spirit be made new, there will be a newness of life; here, therefore, we must begin with ourselves: first cleanse that which is within. We then make sure work, when this is our first work. 2. They are com pared to whited sepulchres (vers. 27, 28.),-fair without, like sepulchres which appear beautiful outward. Some make it to refer to the custom of the Jews to whiten graves, only for the notifying of them, especially if they were in unusual places, that people might avoid them, because of the ceremonial pollution contracted by the touch of a grave. Numb. xix. 16. And it was part of the charge of the overseers of the highways, to repair that whitening when it was decayed. Sepulchres were thus made remarkable. 2 Kings xxiii. 16, 17. It rather alludes, however, to the custom of whitening the sepulchres of eminent persons, for the beautifying of them. It is said here (ver. 29), that they garnished the sepulchres of the righteous; as it is usual with us to erect monuments upon the graves of great persons, and to strew flowers on the graves of dear friends. Now, the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees was like the ornaments of a grave, or the dressing up of a dead body-only for show. The top of their ambition was, to appear righteous before men, and to be applauded and had in admiration by them. But they were foul within, like sepulchres full of dead men's bones, and all uncleanness: so vile are our bodies when the soul has deserted them! Thus were they full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Hypocrisy is the worst iniquity. It is possible for those that have their hearts full of sin, to have their lives free from blame, and to appear very good; but what will it avail us to have the good word of our fellow-servants, if our Master doth not say, "Well done?"

VII. They pretended a deal of kindness for the memory of the prophets that were dead and gone, while they hated and persecuted those that were present with them. This is put last, because it was the blackest part of their character. God is jealous for his honour in his laws and ordinances, and resents it if they be profaned and abused; but he has often expressed an equal jealousy for his honour in his prophets and ministers, and resents it worse if they be wronged and persecuted : and therefore, when our Lord Jesus comes to this head, he speaks more fully than upon any of the others (vers. 29-37); for he that toucheth his ministers, toucheth his anointed, and toucheth the apple of his eye.

Having shown the wickedness of the Pharisees, our Lord next pronounces their doom. He represents their condition as very sad, and in a manner desperate-How can ye escape the damnation of hell? Christ himself preached hell and damnation, for which his ministers have often been reproached by those who care not to hear of it. The damnation of hell will be the fearful end of all impenitent sinners. This doom, coming from Christ, was more terrible than coming from all the prophets and ministers that ever were; for he is the Judge, into whose hands the keys of hell and death are put, and his saying they were damned, made them so. Of all sinners, those who are of the spirit of the scribes and Pharisees are least likely to escape this damnation; for repentance and faith are necessary to that escape; and how will they be brought to these, who are so conceited of themselves, and so prejudiced against Christ and his gospel, as they were? How could they be healed and saved, who could not bear to have their wound searched, nor the balm of Gilead applied to it? Publicans and harlots, who were sensible of their disease and applied themselves to the Physician, were more likely to escape the damnation of hell than those who, though they were in the high road to it, were confident they were in the way to heaven.

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34 Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and 'some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: 35 That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. 36 Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation. 37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, 'and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would "I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens "under her

a Chap. xxi. 34, 35; Luke xi. 49. e Acts v. 40, vii. 58, 59, xxii. 19.
Gen. iv. 8; 1 John iii, 12. 1 Chron, xxiv. 20, 21.
Psal. xvii, 8, xci. 4.

k Luke xili. 34

Chap. x. 17; 2 Cor. xi. 24, 25.
12 Chron. xxiy, 21.

g Rev. xviii. 24. m Deut. xxxii. 11, 12.

wings, and ye would not! 38 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. 39 For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, 'Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

o Psal, cxviii. 26; Chap. xxi. 9.

Jesus Christ designs yet to try them with the means of grace-I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes, ver. 34. The connection is strange. "You are a generation of vipers, not likely to escape the damnation of hell;" one would think it should follow, Therefore you shall never have a prophet sent to you any more;" but no,-" Therefore I will send unto you prophets, to see if you will yet at length be wrought upon, or else to leave you inexcusable, and to justify God in your ruin." He foresees and foretells the ill usage that his messengers would meet with among them,"Some of them ye shall kill and crucify, and yet I will send them." Christ knows beforehand how ill his servants will be treated, and yet sends them, and appoints them their measure of sufferings; yet he loves them never the less for his thus exposing them; for he designs to glorify himself by their sufferings, and to glorify them after their sufferings have come to end. He will counterbalance them, though not prevent them.

He imputes the sin of their fathers to them, because they imitated it,-That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, vers. 35, 36. Though God bear long with a persecuting generation, he will not bear always; and patience abused, turns into the greatest wrath. The longer sinners have been heaping up treasures of wickedness, the deeper and fuller will the treasures of wrath be; and the breaking of them up will be like breaking up the fountains of the great deep.

He laments the wickedness of Jerusalem, and justly upbraids them with the many kind offers he had made them, ver. 37. See with what concern he speaks of that city,-O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! The repetition is emphatical, and bespeaks abundance of commiseration. A day or two before, Christ had wept over Jerusalem, now he sighed and groaned over it. Jerusalem, the vision of peace (so it signifies), must now be the seat of war and confusion; Jerusalem, that had been the joy of the whole earth, must now be a hissing, and an astonishment, and a bye-word; Jerusalem, that has been a city compact together, shall now be shattered and ruined by its own intestine broils; Jerusalem, the place that God has chosen to put his name there, shall now be abandoned to the spoil and the robbers. Lam. i. 1, iv. 1. But wherefore will the Lord do all this to Jerusalem? "Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is removed: all that honoured her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness: yea, she sigheth, and turneth backward."-Lam. i. 8.

The sin of killing the prophets is especially charged upon Jerusalem; because there the sanhedrim, or great council, sat, who took cognizance of Church matters; and therefore a prophet could not perish but in Jerusalem. Luke xiii. 33. It is true, they had not now a power to put any man to death, but they killed the prophets in popular tumults-mobbed them (as Stephen), and stirred up the Roman powers to kill them. At Jerusalem, where the gospel was first preached, it was first persecuted (Acts viii. 1), and that place was the head-quarters of the persecutors; thence warrants were issued out to other cities, and thither the saints were brought bound. Acts ix. 2. Thou stonest them. That was a capital punishment, in use only among the Jews. By the law, false prophets and seducers were to be stoned (Deut. xiii. 10); under colour of which law, they put the true prophets to death.

Christ pronounces the doom of Jerusalem (vers. 38, 39),—Therefore behold your house is left unto you desolate. Both the city and the temple, God's house and their own, all shall be laid waste. But it is especially meant of the temple, which they boasted of, and trusted to; that holy mountain because of which they were so haughty. Christ was now departing from the temple, and never came into it again, but by this word abandoned it to ruin. They doated on it, would have it to themselves; Christ must have no room or interest there. "Well," saith Christ, "it is left to you; take it, and make your best of it; I will never have any thing more to do with it." They had made it a house of merchandise, and a den of thieves, and so it is left to them. When Christ went, the glory departed. Their city also was left to them, destitute of God's presence and grace; he was no longer a wall of fire about them, nor the glory in the midst of them. "The destruction of Jerusalem took place about forty years after these words (ver. 36, &c.) were spoken." ¶Ye shall not see me, &c. The day of your mercy has gone by. I have offered you protection and salvation, and you have rejected it. You are about to crucify me, and your temple is about to be destroyed; and you, as a nation, to be given up to long and dreadful sufferings. You will not see me as a merciful Saviour, offering you redemption any more, till you have borne these heavy judgments. They must come upon you, and be borne, until you would be glad to hail a deliverer, and say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Blessed be he that comes, as the Messiah, to bring deliverance.

'This has not as yet been accomplished; but the days will come when the Jews shall be gathered in, and receive Christ as their Saviour.

CHAPTER XXIV.

1 Christ foretelleth the destruction of the temple: 3 what, and how great calamities shall be before it: 29 the signs of his coming to judgment. 36 And because that day and hour is unknown, 42 we ought to watch like good servants, expecting every moment our Master's coming.

AND "Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples

came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple. 2 And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, "There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. 3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, "Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

c Mark xiii. 3. d 1 Thess. v. 1.

a Mark xiii. 1; Luke xxi. 5. b 1 Kings ix. 7; Jer. xxvi. 18; Mic. iii. 12; Luke xix. 44. When he left the temple, his disciples left it too, and came to him. They came to him to be instructed in private, when his public preaching was over; for the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him. They came to him, to show him the buildings of the temple. It was a stately and beautiful structure-one of the wonders of the world; no cost was spared, no art left untried, to make it sumptuous. It was richly furnished with gifts and offerings; to which there were continual additions made. Mark says (xiii. 1), that they particularly pointed out the stones of the temple, as well as the buildings. "In that temple," says Josephus, the Jewish historian, "were several stones which were forty-five cubits in length, five in height, and six in breadth;" that is, more than seventy feet long, ten wide, and eight high. These stones, of such enormous size, were principally used in building the high wall on the east side, from the base to the top of the mountain. They were also, it is said, beautifully painted with variegated colours. They showed Christ these things, and desired him to take notice of them.

Hereupon Christ foretells the utter ruin and destruction that were coming upon the temple. The temple shall not only be stripped, and plundered, and defaced, but utterly demolished and laid waste-Not one stone shall be left upon another. At the time this was spoken, no event was more improbable than this. The temple was vast, rich, splendid—it was the pride of the nation, and the nation was at peace; yet in the short space of forty years all this was exactly accomplished. Jerusalem was taken by the Roman armies, under the command of Titus, A. D. 70. The account of the siege and destruction of the city is left us by Josephus, a historian of undoubted veracity and singular fidelity. He was a Jewish priest. In the wars of which he gives an account, he fell into the hands of the Romans, and remained with them during the siege and destruction of the city. Being a Jew, he would of course say nothing designed to confirm the prophecies of Jesus Christ; yet his whole history appears almost like a running commentary on these predictions respecting the destruction of the temple. The following particulars are given on his authority :

After the city was taken, he says that Titus "gave orders that they should now demolish the whole city and temple, except three towers, which he reserved standing. But for the rest of the wall, it was laid so completely even with the ground by those who dug it up from the foundation, that there was nothing left, to make those believe who came hither that it had ever been inhabited." Maimonides, a Jewish writer, has also recorded, that "Terentius Rufus, an officer in the army of Titus, with a ploughshare tore up the foundations of the temple," that the prophecy might be fulfilled, "Zion shall be ploughed as a field." Mic. iii. 12. This was all done by direction of Divine Providence. Titus was desirous of preserving the temple, and frequently sent Josephus to the Jews, to induce them to surrender, and save the temple and city; but the prediction of the Saviour had gone forth, and notwithstanding the wish of the Roman general, the temple was to be destroyed. The Jews themselves first set fire to the porticoes of the temple. One of the Roman soldiers, without any command, threw a burning firebrand into the golden window, and soon the temple was in flames. Titus gave orders to extinguish the fire; but amidst the tumult, none of his The soldiers pressed to the temple, and neither fear, nor entreaties, nor stripes, Their hatred to the Jews urged them on to the work of destruction.

orders were obeyed. could restrain them.