4:2 {2} Speaking lies in {b} hypocrisy; having their {c} conscience seared with a hot iron;
(2) Even though heretics pretend holiness ever so much, yet they have no conscience.
(b) For they will as it were practise the art of disguised persons and players, so that we may not think they will lie lurking in some one corner or keep any resemblance of being shameful.
(c) Whose conscience became so hard, that there grew a callous over it, and so became to have a canker in it, and now at length required by very necessity to be burned with a hot iron.
4:2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy. Rather, Through the hypocrisy of men, speaking lies (Revised Version).
Having their conscience seared. The liars just mentioned. The sensitiveness of their consciences is destroyed by the brand of the devil.
4:2 These will depart from the faith, by the hypocrisy of them that speak lies, having their own consciences as senseless and unfeeling as flesh that is seared with an hot iron.
4:1-5 The Holy Spirit, both in the Old and the New Testament, spoke of a general turning from the faith of Christ, and the pure worship of God. This should come during the Christian dispensation, for those are called the latter days. False teachers forbid as evil what God has allowed, and command as a duty what he has left indifferent. We find exercise for watchfulness and self-denial, in attending to the requirements of God's law, without being tasked to imaginary duties, which reject what he has allowed. But nothing justifies an intemperate or improper use of things; and nothing will be good to us, unless we seek by prayer for the Lord's blessing upon it.
