|
Responsibility for the people's lack of faith is attributed by Jesus to the Jewish clergy, the "blind guides," who keep the people from true faith: "But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in." (Matt 23:13). "They be blind leaders of the blind. And, if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." In the same chapter of Matthew's Gospel he calls them "blind fools," "hypocrites," "serpents," "offspring of vipers," "murderers of prophets:" "Ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets." (Matt 29-31).
(102:2)
see
|