roud, puffed-up words, which
have nothing to back them.

_And they hold themselves up for respect, for advantage sake._ This
is their way of judging all, according to the person; in all the
Pope's laws, through and through, you do not once find that a bishop
is to humble himself below a priest, or aim at anything, as the fruit
of a christian walk,--but all is merely of this sort: the curate is
to be subject to the priest, the priest subject to the bishop, the
bishop to the archbishop, but he to the patriarch, the patriarch to
the Pope, and after this, how each is to wear the robe, the tonsure
and the cowl, possess so many churches and benefices.

Thus they have reduced it all to an outward matter, and such is the
child's play and fool's work, they are driving at; and they have
accounted it gross sin, if any one does not hold to such views. So
that Jude says well, that they put a mask upon everything, and have
this only before their eyes. Thus no one knows anything of faith, of
love, nor of the Cross; whence the people generally are content to
eat and play the fool, and devote all their property in the manner
they do, as if to the true service of God; it is thus that they hold
themselves up to respect for advantage sake.

V. 17, 18. _But, my beloved, remember ye the words that were said
before by the Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, when they said to
you that in the last times there should come scoffers who should walk
after their own lusts, in a godless state._ This passage shows also
clearly, that this epistle is not by St. Jude the Apostle, for he
does not count nor reckon himself among the other Apostles, but
speaks of them as of those who preached long before him; so that it
is reasonable to suppose that another pious man wrote the epistle,
one who had read St. Peter's epistles and had drawn this from that
source. Who these scoffers are, we have said above: they walk,
moreover, after their own lusts,--not merely their fleshly lusts, but
those of that godless life which they lead, and they shape all as it
pleases them; they care neither for worldly authority, nor the word
of God; they are neither under external nor internal government,
whether divine or human; they float about between heaven and earth in
their lust, just as the devil leads them.

V. 19. _These are they who make sects, sensual, who have not the
Spirit._ There he has touched on what Peter speaks of, their secretly
bringing in of pestilent