James 1:26

True and false Religion

26. If any man among you seem to be religious Better, If any man thinks that he is religious. The Greek adjective is one which expresses the outward ritual side of religion, answering to "godliness" as the inward. Comp. the cognate word rendered "worshipof angels" in Colossians 2:18. It is not easy to find an appropriate English adjective for it. "Religious" in its modern sense is too wide, in its old pre-Reformation sense, as meaning one who belonged to a monastic order, too narrow. That sense can hardly be said to have attached to it at the time of the Authorised Version, as the term is used both in the Homilies (e. g. "Christ and his religion," Hom. on Holy Scripture) and Bacon's Essays (Of Unity in Religion) quite in its modern sense for a whole system of faith and practice. "Devout," "pious," "reverent," suggest themselves, but all fail to express what the Greek beyond question expresses. "Worshipper" would perhaps be the nearest equivalent. "Ritualist," which answers most closely to the strict meaning, has unfortunately acquired a conventional and party meaning.

and bridleth not his tongue The image was a sufficiently common one in the Greek poets and philosophers. St James returns to it in James 3:2-3. See note there.

deceiveth his own heart Here the word is the more common one, as distinguished from that which had been used in James 1:22.