1 Timothy 4:2

1 Timothy 4:2. Speaking lies in hypocrisy. The grammar of the sentence requires a different rendering: ‘ In, or by, the hypocrisy of men who speak lies.'

Having their conscience seared as with a red-hot iron. The English Version (rightly, as I think) gives prominence to the idea of the callous insensibility produced by cauterizing. The thought of this as the stage to which even conscience may be brought, as of one who has made himself ‘past feeling,' was already indeed familiar to St. Paul, in Ephesians 4:19. The other aspect of the word, as pointing to the brand by which criminals were stamped with infamy, is perhaps included. The fact that the one implied the other in the actual branding process, a fact which he may well have learnt from St. Luke's medical experience, would suggest to him that which was analogous to it in the history of the soul.