"Just as the fishermen hide the hook with bait and covertly hook the fish, similarly, the crafty allies of the heresies cover their evil teachings and corrupt understanding with pietism and hook the more simple, bringing them to spiritual death." +Isidore of Pelusium
"'Just as the fishermen hide the hook with bait and covertly hook the fish, similarly, the crafty allies of the heresies cover their evil teachings and corrupt understanding with pietism and hook the more simple, bringing them to spiritual death.' +Isidore of Pelusium"
Isidore was basically right, however, he got the target audience backwards. It's not the simple, even illiterate peasant who often fell (or falls) for heresies. No. The simple peasant trudges to Mass/Liturgy Sunday after Sunday, Holy Day after Holy Day, week after week, year after year. He listens to what is read to him from the Scriptures. He says the memorized prayers. He kisses the icon or lights a votary candle and contemplates God saying the rosary. Most of all, he takes the Sacraments, and they, to him, are the words he doesn't need to read, the defining acts of religious piety and faith that transcend all arguments or words. Words get in the way.
"The Body of Christ" - "Amen!"
What can be added to that?
It is not the simple who are easily lead astray.
It is the sophisticated and the semi-sophisticated, the ones who can read and write and polemicize, for whom the endless cycles of ages of bowing and praying and taking sacraments with a few words to the accompaniment of incense and choirs is just Not Good Enough, because it engages their senses but leaves them silent and receptive, not expressive. They don't get to insert their opinions. Their thoughts about how intelligent modern people ought to be doing things don't get listened to.
And so the traditions are scorned, not by the simple, but by the smart, in favor of confections that flattered first their literacy (as compared to the stupid peasant), and later, their level of education.
I don't think fisherman need to hide the hook from the simple. The simple are small fry. The fisherman wants the big fish - that's who he baits the hook for.