Let them alone: they are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
All Commentaries on Matthew 15:14 Go To Matthew 15
Jerome
AD 420
In one of the Lord’s discourses the whole superstition of Jewish observances had been cut down. They placed their whole religion in using or abstaining from certain meats.
As this word ‘scandalum’ (offence or stumbling block) is of such frequent use in ecclesiastical writings, we will shortly explain it. We might render it in Latin,‘offendiculum,’ or ‘ruina,’ or ‘impactio;’ and so when we read, Whosoever shall scandalize, we understand, whoso by word or deed has given an occasion of falling to any.
Shall that plant also be rooted up of which the Apostle says, “I planted, Apollos watered?” God indeed has planted it, and none may root up His planting. But since that planting was through the disposition of the will of him which was planted, none other can root it up unless its own will consents thereto.
This is also the same as that Apostolic injunction, “A heretic after the firstand second admonition reject, knowing that such a one is perverse.” To the same end the Saviour commands evil teachers to be left to their own will, knowing that it is hardly that they can be brought to the truth.
