Revelation 2:24

24. Unto you… the rest The and being omitted as spurious, you, and the rest, mean the same class, namely, the part of the Church pure from Jezebel.

Depths… speak To boast of their depth was a trait of the Gnostics. Says Tertullian, “Put an inquiry to them in good faith, and with grave face and lofty brow they will answer, It is deep!” Says Irenaeus, “Really blind, they profess themselves to have attained the depths of the abyss.” And Eusebius says of the Simonians: “Those deeper secrets, of which they say that he who hears them for the first time would be astonished and confounded, are indeed full of folly and madness. They are such things that a decent person cannot write of them, nor open his lips about them, on account of their horrid filthiness and obscenity.”

As they speak Or rather, say, or, as they call them. To whom does this they refer? Some reply, the Christians; but there is nothing that fixes the reference to them; and more probably it was the Gnostics who talked about the depths. It may be that the they say, has for its object the term the depths, while the phrase of Satan is flung in sarcastically by the Lord himself, to characterize their depths. It might then be printed thus: have not known “the depths” of Satan! as they say. Or the whole phrase, more probably, may be in the mouth of the Gnostics themselves, unequivocally professing that they do know the very depths of Satan. Their satanic bravado of licentiousness justifies this rendering. Eusebius says, (b. 4, c. 7,) that they went so far as to say, “that the basest deeds should be perpetrated by those who would attain to a perfect insight into their secret doctrine.” See our note on 2 Thessalonians 2:7.

None other burden Seems to be a remarkable quotation from the apostolic decree, Acts 15:28, where the abstaining from licentious sacrificial feasts are the very burden, or Christian obligation, imposed upon them. Purity from these Gnostic depths is the only injunction he now presses upon them.