and the Pharisees fast oft, but Thy disciples fast not?
15. And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the
bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with
them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall
be taken from them, and then shall they fast. 16. No
man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment,
for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the
garment, and the rent is made worse. 17. Neither do men
put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break,
and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but
they put new wine into new bottles, and both are
preserved.'--MATT. ix. 9-17.

All three evangelists connect the call of Matthew immediately with the
cure of the paralytic, and follow it with an account of Christ's answers
to sundry cavils from Pharisees and John's disciples. No doubt, the
spectacle of this new Teacher taking a publican into His circle of
disciples, and, not content with such an outrage on all proper patriotic
feeling, following it up with scandalous companionship with the sort
of people that a publican could get to accept his hospitality, sharpened
hatred and made suspicion prick its ears. Mark and Luke call the
publican Levi, he calls himself Matthew, the former being probably his
name before his discipleship, the latter, that by which he was known
thereafter. Possibly Jesus gave it him, as in the cases of Simon, and
perhaps Bartholomew. But, however acquired, it superseded the old one,
as the fact that it appears in the lists of the apostles in both the
other evangelists and in Acts, shows. Its use here may be a trace of
a touching desire to make sure that readers, who only knew him as
Matthew, should understand who this publican was. It is like the little
likenesses of themselves, in some corner of a background, that early