Christ admonishes the people to follow the good doctrine, not the bad example of the scribes and Pharisees. He warns his disciples not to imitate their ambition and denounces divers woes against them for their hypocrisy and blindness.
23:1. Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to his disciples,
23:2. Saying: The scribes and the Pharisees have sitten on the chair of Moses.
23:3. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not. For they say, and do not.
23:4. For they bind heavy and insupportable burdens and lay them on men's shoulders: but with a finger of their own they will not move them.
23:5. And all their works they do for to be seen of men. For they make their phylacteries broad and enlarge their fringes.
Phylacteries... that is, parchments, on which they wrote the ten commandments, and carried them on their foreheads before their eyes: which the Pharisees affected to wear broader than other men; so to seem more zealous for the law.
23:6. And they love the first places at feasts and the first chairs in the synagogues,
23:7. And salutations in the market place, and to be called by men, Rabbi.
23:8. But be not you called Rabbi. For one is your master: and all you are brethren.