Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew Mark and Luke John Calvin (continued)
HARMONY OF THE EVANGELISTS
afterwards shows itself in the outward actions. Is it objected that intemperance in eating is defilement? The solution is easy. Christ speaks only of the proper and lawful use of those things which God has put in our power. To eat and drink are things in their own nature free and indifferent: if any corruption be added, it proceeds from the man himself, and therefore must be regarded not as external, but internal. 1018
19. For out of the heart proceed wicked thoughts Hence we infer that the word mouth, as I have mentioned, was used by Christ in a former verse by way of allusion to the context; for now he makes no mention of the mouth, but merely says that out of the heart of man proceeds all that is sinful and that corrupts by its pollution. Mark differs from Matthew in this respect, that he gives a larger catalogue of sins, such as lusts, or irregular desires. The Greek word ({πλεονεξίαι}) is by some rendered covetousness; but I have preferred to take it in a general acceptation. Next come fraud and intemperance, and those which immediately follow. Though the mode of expression be figurative, it is enough to understand Christ's meaning to be, that all sins proceed from the wicked and corrupt affections of the heart. To say that an evil eye proceeds from the heart is not strictly accurate, but it involves nothing that is absurd or ambiguous; for it means, that an unholy heart pollutes the eyes by making them the ministers, or organs, of wicked desires. And yet Christ does not speak as if every thing that is evil in man were confined to open sins; but, in order to show more clearly that the heart of man is the abode of all evils, 1019 he says that the proofs and results appear in the sins themselves.
And pollute the man. Instead of the verb pollute, the Greek term is {κοινοῖ}, make common; as Mark, a little before, (7:2,) used the phrase, {κοιναῖς} {χερσὶ}, with common hands, for with unclean hands. 1020 It is a Hebrew phrase; 1021 for, since
God had set apart the Jews on the condition that they should separate themselves from all the pollutions of the Gentiles, everything that was inconsistent with this holiness was called common, that is, profane.
1018"Et pourtant le vice est tousiours interieur, et ne vient point d'ailleurs;" — "and therefore sin is always internal, and does not come from without."
1019"Que le coeur de l'homme est le siege et la source de tous maux;" — "that the heart of man is the seat and the source of all evils."
1020"Les mains communes pour souillees et non lavees;" — "common hands for polluted and not washed."
1021"C'est une facon de parler propre aux Hebrieux;" — "it is a mode of speaking peculiar to the Hebrews."