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Ye lade men with burdens - By insisting on the observance of the traditions of the elders, to which it appears, by the way, they paid no great attention themselves. See on Matthew 23:4; (note).

See the notes at Matthew 23:4.

How was it with the rebellious inhabitants of the antediluvian world? After rejecting the message of Noah, they plunged into sin with greater abandon than ever before, and doubled the enormity of their corrupting practices. Those who refuse to reform by accepting Christ find nothing reformative in sin; their minds are set to carry their spirit of revolt, and they are not, and never will be, forced to submission. The judgment which God brought upon the antediluvian world declared it incurable. The destruction of Sodom proclaimed the inhabitants of the most beautiful country in the world incorrigible in sin. The fire and brimstone from heaven consumed everything except Lot, his wife, and two daughters. The wife, looking back in disregard of God's command, became a pillar of salt. TM 75.1

How God bore with the Jewish nation while they were murmuring and rebellious, breaking the Sabbath and every other precept of the law! He repeatedly declared them worse than the heathen. Each generation surpassed the preceding in guilt. The Lord permitted them to go into captivity, but after their deliverance His requirements were forgotten. Everything that He committed to that people to be kept sacred was perverted or displaced by the inventions of rebellious men. Christ said to them in His day, “Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law?” And these were the men who set themselves up as judges and censors over those whom the Holy Spirit was moving to declare the word of God to the people. (See John 7:9-23, 27, 28; Luke 11:37-52.) TM 75.2

I have risen a long while before day to write these words, for I see a great deal that needs to be done in heart and practice for men in authority who are very officious to make laws and restrictions for others, while they themselves do not obey the law of God. They will learn sometime that there is prosperity and happiness in no other path than the way of the Lord. Men's reason may be obscured, the conscience seared by long practice in their own way, but it is not a way of peace or security. Wherever the peace of God reigns in the heart, there is the tenderness and love of Christ.—Letter 75, 1895. PM 131.1

Christ pronounces a woe upon all who transgress the law of God. He pronounced a woe upon the lawyers in His day because they exercised their power to afflict those who looked to them for justice and judgment. All the terrible consequences of sin will come to those who, even though they may be nominal church members, regard it as a light matter to set aside the law of Jehovah, and to make no distinction between good and evil. TDG 222.3