Matthew Poole and continuators on Jeremiah 23:16

16 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets, that prophesie unto you , they make you vain , they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD .

People are under no Religious Obligation to hear any thing but the Revealed Will of God, and are not to obey those that call to them for what that doth not call to them.

Nor to listen to them, the Scope of whose teaching is but to make them vain, sinfully vain; or to deceive their Souls, no Man is under an O[illegible: 1 letter]ligation to deceive himself.

They pretend to Visions, that God hath revealed his Mind to them, in the same way as he useth to reveal himself to true Prophets; but there is no such thing; it is but a fiction of their own; Our Lord, Mat. 7.15. gives us the same way to know false Prophets, ver. 20. By their fruits you shall know them. Let their external Mission be what, and which way it will, if what they teach agree not with the revea[illegible: 1 letter]ed Will of God, they are false Prophets. Many of these Priests were regularly enough descended, and the Prophets regularly enough educated and constituted, yet by this shewed themselves false Prophets, that what they published was not from God, nor agreed with his revealed Will; therefore the people were under no Religious Obligation to hearken to them.

Marginal references: chap. 14.14▪