Luke 18:12

Twice in the sabbath, saith the Greek, but that is ordinary, to denominate the days of the week from the sabbath; the meaning is, twice between sabbath and sabbath. Those learned in the Jewish Rabbins tell us, that the Jews were wont to fast twice in a week, that is, the Pharisees and the more devout sort of them; once on the second, another time on the fifth day (which are those days which we call Monday and Thursday). From whence some tell us that Wednesday and Friday come to be with us fasting days or fish days. The Christians in former times, thinking it beneath them to be less in these exercises than the Jews, would have also two fasting days each week; and those not the same with the Jews, that they might not be thought to Judaize. If that custom had any true antiquity, I doubt not but they fasted after another rate than the papists or others now do, who pretend a religion to those days. But neither was the Pharisees practice, nor the practice of Christians, in this thing to be much admired or applauded. For fasting was always used in extraordinary cases; and the bringing extraordinary duties into ordinary practice usually ends in a mere formality. It is a good rule, neither to make ordinary duties extraordinary or rare, nor yet extraordinary duties ordinary: the doing of the first ordinarily issues in the loss of them, and quite leaving them off; the latter, in a formal lifeless performance of them. I give tithes of all that I possess. The emphasis lieth in the word all. Others paid tithe of apples, and some fruits of the earth (of which alone tithe was due); but the Pharisees would pay tithes of those things, as to which it was generally held that the law did not strictly require them, such as pot herbs, eggs milk, cheese. Our Saviour bare them this testimony, that they paid tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, Matthew 23:23; rue, and all manner of herbs, Luke 11:42. This Pharisee boasteth of his exactness in two things, neither of which were required particularly by the law of God. Nor did he amiss in them, if he had not omitted the weightier things of the law, as our Saviour charges them to have done in both the texts before mentioned. But how came these things to make him a plea for his justification before God? Will he plead his righteousness, because he did things which God did not command him, while in the mean time he omitted those things which God had commanded? Or, what did these things signify; if they were not done out of a root of love? The law is, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart; and how could they be performed out of love, when love was one of the things which our Saviour charges them to have omitted? Of the same nature are other works, such as building of churches, and hospitals, and alms houses: the fruit is good, if the root be good; but if they be done out of ostentation, or opinion of meriting at God's hands, men's money (notwithstanding these things) will perish with them, for heaven is not to be purchased by our money.