Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.
Read Chapter 3
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Take heed Not to imitate their incredulous obstinacy, lest you never enter into the place of eternal rest, by departing from God by sin. (Witham)
To abandon Christ is to abandon God, since Christ is God. He who denies the Son, believes not the Father, who has wrought so many miracles to sanction his mission. (1 John ii. 23.) It is of little consequence to eternity whether it be the doctrine of faith or the life of faith we reject, if persons are equally lost by either practical or speculative infidelity.
Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. For from hardness unbelief arises: and as in bodies, the parts that have become callous and hard do not yield to the hands of the physicians, so also souls that are hardened yield not to the word of God. For it is probable besides that some even disbelieved as though the things which had been done were not true.
Therefore he says, Take heed lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. For since the argument from the future is not so persuasive as from the past, he reminds them of the history, in which they had wanted faith. For if your fathers (he says) because they did not hope as they ought to have hoped, suffered these things, much more will you. Since to them also is this word addressed: for, Today (he says) is ever, so long as the world lasts.
Thinking, then, that they could find a better, they wander and become wretched, and enter upon pathless places. But those which fell into the fire and were burned
