Glosses, chatter, and adulteration

Meaning

Human glosses are condemned in Part IV: the spiritual comparison · unit 45 when they displace or adulterate God's true Word. The author compares them with scribal leaven and mouse droppings mixed among pepper, then contrasts ear-filling chatter with the Word's saving power. This is a polemical judgment on corrupt exposition, not a ban on all explanation as such. The same passage insists that inward hearing accompanies outward hearing; it does not dismiss preaching as dispensable sound. The English retains the harsh contamination image and the denial that the Word is a bare echo. Keeping both prevents the attack on glosses from becoming an attack on the proclaimed Word itself.