_That no man may deceive you. [1] He means those false teachers and vain philosophers, who deceived them by a sophistical way of reasoning, advancing in this manner their fabulous inventions; it is likely some disciples of Simon the magician. (Witham) --- The false teachers whom St. Paul wished to r... [ Continue Reading ]
_Rooted and built up in him, who is the head of all, your Redeemer, and author of your salvation, not upon Angels. (Witham)_... [ Continue Reading ]
Let any man impose upon you. [2] In the Greek, make a prey of you, as thieves that steal things. --- There were two sorts of false teachers among them; they who mixed vain errors from heathen philosophy with the principles of the Christian religion, and they who had been Jews, and were for making th... [ Continue Reading ]
_For in him (in Christ) dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead (of the divinity) corporally. [3] That is, in the person of Christ, the Son of God, really and substantially united to our human nature. Not inhabiting, as in a temple as the Nestorian heretics pretended, nor as by his grace in men's so... [ Continue Reading ]
_Buried with him in baptism, signified by the ceremony of immersion in baptism. See Romans vi. 3. (Witham)_... [ Continue Reading ]
_Blotting out, &c.[4] This is commonly expounded of the sentence of eternal death pronounced against sinful Adam, and all his posterity, for having sinned in him. Others would have it to signify only the yoke and obligations of the Mosaical law, which could not of itself remit sins, and occasionally... [ Continue Reading ]
_And despoiling the principalities and powers; the devil and his infernal spirits. (Witham)_... [ Continue Reading ]
Let no man, therefore, judge you in meat or in drink. That is, for not abstaining from meats, called unclean, for drinking out of a cup without a cover, (see Numbers xix.) or for not keeping the Jewish festivals. For these were but shadows, types and figures of future things to be fulfilled in the n... [ Continue Reading ]
Let no man seduce you. [5] In the Greek, hinder you from getting the prize. --- Willing [6] (by their own will) in humility, and religion of Angels, practising a wrong and mistaken humility in regard of the Angels, when you pay them a worship not due to them, pretending them to be the mediators and... [ Continue Reading ]
_If then you be dead with Christ, or if you be not of this world, why do you act as if you were in it? practising the ceremonies of the law, as if you still expected Christ; all which are hurtful to you. (St. Jerome) --- In your baptism you died with Jesus Christ to all legal observances, and should... [ Continue Reading ]
_Touch not, &c. That is, why do you permit yourselves to be taught in this manner by those Jewish doctors: why do you touch or eat this, lest you be unclean? such superstitious observations, now at least, when there is no necessity nor obligation for you to observe them, tend to destruction, &c. (Wi... [ Continue Reading ]
_Which things have indeed, (as such masters teach you) a shew of wisdom, in their nice superstitious ways, joined by some of them with extraordinary abstinences, and severities practised on the body in fasting, which they observe, without any honour or regard, even not to the satiating of the flesh;... [ Continue Reading ]