There is no kind of sin about which Scripture is silent and about which it does not teach its readers.

False prophets are teachers of the church whose words or life do not properly accord with the doctrine that they preach.

If the Word of God accuses me, I will try to be converted.

The word of the present can agree with those who teach in the church, as long as they do not teach other than what the truth demands.

If anyone reading the gospel fits its proper sense to the gospel without understanding that the Lord speaks, he is a false prophet speaking according to his own heart in the gospel.

If I find in Moses and the prophets the thought of Christ, I speak not according to my own heart but from the Holy Spirit.

Whatever was said at that time to the people of Israel now applies to the church. The holy prophets are apostles and apostolic people, but the lying and raging prophets are all heretics, whose leaders invent things from their own heart; the people are led astray by them and acquiesce in the falsehoods of others.

The Ishmaelites represent those who are a law unto themselves, who yield to their own capricious hearts and evil desires. Ezekiel expresses the same thought: Son of man, prophesy against the prophets that prophesy their own thought and do whatever their spirit impels. We, however, must not follow our own inclinations and be labeled Ishmaelites, obedient to themselves, but rather be called Ishmael, obedient to God.

In the same way that a saint prays with the Spirit and prays with understanding and sings with the spirit and sings with understanding, so the false prophet prophesies according to his own heart and follows not the Spirit of God but his own spirit.

Since the name of prophets, according to the pattern of the Scriptures, is used of good and bad alike, they differ from each other in that good prophets are said to be wise and evil prophets are said to be stupid and senseless. The one refers to the people of the church, whereas the other refers to all heretics who depart from the Spirit of God and follow their own spirit, because in no way do they prophesy from divine impulse but from their own hearts.

The fox is an animal good for nothing, sly, wild, ferocious.

They observe empty things and divine falsehood and say that they have been sent by God, although have not; and they persist in their errors, keen on establishing only what they are saying. They argue because everything they have preached is empty.

At another time, because of his deceit toward his brother, he makes himself like the villainous fox. Truly, there is in him excessive folly and a bestial lack of reason, because, made according to the image of the Creator, he neither perceives his own constitution from the beginning nor wishes to understand such great dispensations that were made for his sake, so that he could learn his own dignity from them; he does not realize that, throwing aside the image of the heavenly, he has taken up the image of the earthly.

All that they want is false, and they can never see the truth. Take an example. To read the Scripture and to hear something other than what is written is to have an untruthful picture of Scripture; but to hear Scripture and interpret it in accordance with the truth, that is to see the truth.

He complains, saying, You have not gone up against the enemy, neither built a wall for the house of Israel, to stand in the battle in the day of the Lord. Now, to go up against the enemy is to speak boldly against the powers of this world for defense of the flock To stand in the battle in the day of the Lord is out of love of justice to resist evil people when they contend against us. For if a shepherd feared to say what is right, what else is it but to have turned his back in keeping silence? But surely, if he puts himself in front for the flock, he builds a wall against the enemy for the house of Israel.

To go up in opposition means openly to rebuke any powers that behave wickedly; and we hold fast in battle for the house of Israel on the day of the Lord and build a wall of resistance if we defend innocent believers against the unrighteousness of the wicked with the power of righteousness. Since a hireling does not do these things, he flees when he sees a wolf coming.

Whom does he mean by all those who have come before me? Those who say, Thus says the Lord! But the Lord has not sent them; they who have come on their own authority and have not been sent are the thieves and robbers.

Pray for us that our words may not be false.

This is what we are looking for, that the Lord will be present as a witness to my words, that he may himself confirm what is said by witness of his holy Scriptures.

The ministry of prophets is about speaking against heretics whose task is empty, whose visions are false and who persist in establishing their own words, because the Lord comes against them, rising up and lifting his hand over them to shake them, and he does not ensure that they are to be spared.

Because [ Judas] was corrupted by the plague of covetousness and had his name struck out from that heavenly list, it is suitably said of him… They shall not be in the counsel of my people, nor shall they enrolled in the house of Israel, neither shall they enter into the land of Israel.

There is a peace that does not have a stumbling block and a peace that does. The one that does not have a stumbling block is from love; the one which does, from pretense. So also the prophet says, Peace, peace; and where is peace? Let us therefore run away from the peace of sinners, for they conspire against the guiltless person, they come together to oppress him who is just, they destroy the widow or overcome her modesty.^[1]

They who choose to declare their own honor have refused to dwell in [God’s] house; and therefore they do not sing a new song with all the earth.^[1] For they do not share it with the whole world; and hence they are not building in the house but have erected a whitened wall. How sternly does God threaten the whitened wall?… What is the whitened wall but hypocrisy, that is, pretense? Outside it is bright; inside it is dirt.

How is the cause helped by the people who dance attendance on these people with itching ears who know neither how to hear nor how to speak? They confound old mire with new cement and, as Ezekiel says, daub a wall with untempered mortar; so that, when the truth comes in a shower, they are brought to nothing.

The words that follow describe and condemn some sin that has been committed. The judgment contained in these words is just, for it is as if he were giving notice in the words of the prophet that, if you had not sinned, he would not have made these threats…. The inspired Word exists because of both obedience and disobedience: that we may be saved by obeying it and educated because we have disobeyed.

This face, that is to say the ruling faculty in our soul, if it is not fixed toward what it should understand in the manner that it sees, it announces to its hearers that what it looks at has not in fact been seen.

It should have a face that wants to be fixed toward what it is striving to understand, and for this reason the order is always first given to those who want to prophecy to make their face firm.

Soft are the souls and intentions of those leaders who always compose resonant and harmonious words.

The Word of God must proclaim what is for the salvation of the hearer, what exhorts him to continence, to the practice of sensible actions, to all the things to which the person who is assiduous in works and not pleasures must apply himself in order to be able to obtain what God has promised.

When the work of the speaker is deployed in licentious talk, a veil is placed on the head of everyone regardless of age, not just the children and the young but also the elderly.

Woe to those heresies and teachings! They promise respite and deceive every age and gender, in order to capture the souls of unhappy people, and they defame me to my own people until I am believed to desire nothing but my own pleasure.

The prophet was lamenting the wretched frailty of our condition, which has no rest in this life and loses everything by death’s sudden onset. For the Holy Spirit revealed to him that man would not arise for so long a time, until he should come who would refuse to stitch the old to the new or join new material^[1] to the old but would make all things new, even as he said, Behold, I make all things new!^[2]

Allow me, O Christ, to break all pillows made for the luxury of souls.

To put cushions under every elbow is to cherish with bland flatteries souls that are falling from their uprightness and reclining themselves in this world’s enjoyment. For it is as though the elbow of a recumbent person rested on a cushion and his head on pillows, when the hardness of reproof is withdrawn from one who sins, and when the softness of favor is offered to him, that he may lie softly in error, while no roughness of contradiction troubles him.

There were probably in the time of our ancestors also some who… did the works of the false prophets;… a thing, by the way, done (I think) by some even today. When, for example, we say that he who calls his brother a fool will go into hell fire, others will say, what? Impossible, they say. And again, when we say that the covetous person is an idolater, in this too again they make excuses and say the expression is hyperbolical. And in this way they underrate and explain away all the commandments.

Anyone who condemns a righteous person is putting to death one who is not dying; and one who tries to absolve a guilty person from his punishment is striving to bring back to life one who is not living. All cases must be carefully considered, and only then the power of binding and loosing used. The pastor must look at the sin and the repentance following after the sin, so that his sentence absolves those to whom almighty God grants the grace of sorrow. There is true absolution on the part of the one presiding only when it is in accord with the decision of the internal judge.

We flee what is bitter, even though it is good for us, and we do not want to labor, because we are softened by pleasures, because we do not know that it is impossible to be a friend of pleasure and at the same time a friend of God.

Let us pray that God will deliver us even from the hand of such leaders who, wherever they are, speak to please their hearers and cut and divide the church, because many are more fond of pleasures than they are of God.