Jeremiah 23:16

The guilt decreed against the wicked heretics is inevitable. They reject the words of the holy apostles and evangelists and pervert them to that meaning that seems to them to be right without due examination. They fall from the straight way and wander from the doctrines of piety, deceiving and being deceived. For while, so to speak, they have bidden farewell to the sacred Scriptures, they speak from their own heart and not out of the mouth of the Lord, as Scripture says. Even though the blessed Evangelist John wrote to us, that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, they drag to the exact opposite both the tenet concerning him and the quotation that proves it, saying that the only-begotten Word of God was not in the beginning, nor true God, and he was not even with God, that is in union with him by nature; God, who has no body, cannot be imagined to be confined to in any one place.

God gives the promise, "I will deliver them from the hand of the grave, and from death I will redeem them." So the blessed prophets are in harmony with the decrees from on high. They speak to us not of their own heart or of the will of people but from the mouth of God, as it is written. It is the Holy Spirit speaking within them that declares in every matter what is the sentence of God and his almighty and unalterable will. The prophet Isaiah has said to us, "Your dead shall arise. Those in the graves shall be raised. They who are in the earth shall rejoice. For the dew from you is healing to them." And by the dew I imagine he means the life-giving power of the Holy Spirit, and that influence that abolishes death as being that of God and of life.

The Lord cries out and says, "Do not listen to the words of the prophets who invent a vain vision for themselves, which they speak as false prophets from their own heart and not from the mouth of the Lord. They say to them that reject the words of the Lord, "Peace shall be yours." They who themselves have neither peace nor the church are now offering peace; they who have withdrawn from the church are permitting the bringing back and recalling of the lapsed. God is one, and Christ, one, and the church, one, and the chair established on Peter by the voice of the Lord, one. Another altar cannot be set up or a new priesthood be made contrary to the one altar and the one priesthood.

Against such people as these the Lord cries out, from these he reins in and recalls his erring people, saying, "Do not listen to the words of the prophets who invent a vain vision for themselves, which they speak as false prophets from their own heart and not from the mouth of the Lord. They say to those who reject the words of the Lord, 'Peace shall be yours' and to all who walk according to their own desires, to everyone who walks in the error of his heart, they have said, 'No evil shall come on you.' "

(Verse 16, 17.) Thus says the Lord of hosts: Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, and deceive you. They speak a vision of their own heart, and not from the mouth of the Lord. They say to those who despise me (or reject my word), the Lord has spoken, you shall have peace. And to everyone who walks according to the stubbornness of his own heart, they say, no evil shall come upon you.