and shaved the hair of their head: * which usage illustrates the conduct of St. Paul, as related in Acts xvii, 18. Women as well as men might bind themselves by this vow, and at the expiration of it, they presented themselves to the priest at the door of the tabernacle or temple, where they offered the prescribed sacrifices; (Numb. vi, 13, &c.) and then the priest, after having caused their heads to be shaved, and the hair to be cast into the fire which was under the sacrifice, pronounced them liberated from their vow.

The

7. OF THE RECHABITES.-The Rechabites were not Israelites or Jews, but Kenites or Midianites, who used to live in tents. Their peculiar mode of living was not the result of a religious institute, but a mere civil ordinance grounded upon a national custom, for the Nabathæan Arabs were accustomed to live in tents, and traverse the country in quest of pasture for their cattle, and so the modern Arabs still do. Rechabites derived their name from Jonadab the son of Rechab, a man of eminent zeal for the pure worship of God against idolatry, who assisted king Jehu in destroying the house of Ahab and the worshippers of Baal, 2 Kings x. He gave a rule of life to his children and their posterity, which is recorded in Jer. xxxv, 5-7; and which consisted of these three articles: 1. That they should drink no wine. 2. That they should neither possess nor occupy any houses, fields, or vineyards, and, 3. that they should dwell in tents. In these regulations it appears that the founder of the Rechabites had only a mere civil or prudential object

*Joseph. de Bell. Jud. lib. ii, c. 15.

in view, which was, that his posterity might live many days in the land where they were strangers. Such would naturally be the consequence of such temperate mode of living. The Rechabites flourished as a community about one hundred and eighty years; after the captivity they were dispersed, unless the Essenes succeeded them in their mode of life.

VIII. Of the Jewish Sects.

1. OF THE SADDUCEES.-The sect of the Sadducees were the followers of one Sadock, a disciple of Antigonus Sochæus, president of the Sanhedrim, or great council, who flourished about two hundred and sixty years before the Christian æra, and who taught the reasonableness of serving God disinterestedly, and not under the servile impulse of the fear of punishment, or the mercenary hope of reward. Sadock, misunderstanding the doctrine of his master, deduced the inference that there was no future state of rewards or punishment. Their principal tenets were the following: 1. "That there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit; (Matt. xxii, 23; Acts xxiii, 8.) and that the soul of man perishes together with the body. 2. That there is no fate, or providence, but that all men enjoy the most ample freedom of action; in other words, the absolute power of doing either good or evil, according to their own choice; hence they were very severe judges. 3. They paid no regard whatever to any tradition, adhering closely to the letter of Scripture, but preferring the five books of Moses to the rest. The Saddu

cees were the Materialists and Deists of the Jewish nation. In point of numbers, they were an inconsiderable sect; but to make up this numerical deficiency, some persons of the first rank and eminence were embracing their tenets. *

2. OF THE PHARISEES.-The Pharisees were the most numerous and popular sect among the Jews. The time when they first appeared is not known, but it is probable to have been not long after the origin of the Sadducees, and perhaps the two sects did spring up together. Probably in their origin they were a pure and holy people. They derived the name of Pharisees, i. e. separatists, from the Hebrew word w, pharash, to separate, because they separated themselves from the rest of the Jews to superior strictness in religion. They boasted that, from their accurate knowledge of religion, they were the favourites of heaven :† and thus trusting in themselves that they were righteous, despised others. Luke xi, 52; xviii, 9--11. The Pharisees, in process of time, like all religious sects and parties, degenerated: they lost the spirit of their institution, and had only the form of godliness, when Jesus Christ was on earth, for he bore witness, that they did make the outside of the cup and platter clean; they observed the rules of their institution, but the spirit was gone.

The following were their principal tenets, viz.

*

1. They ascribed all things to providence, or fate,

Joseph. de Bell. Jud. l. ii, c. 8; Antiq. Jud. 1. xviii, c. i; ibid. 1. xiii, c. 5; de Bell. Jud. 1. ii, c. 8; Antiq. Jud. 1. xiii, c. 10; 1. xviii, c.1.

Joseph. Antiq. Jud. lib. xvii, c. 2.

I

but not so absolutely as to take away the free-will of man.

*

2. They believed in the existence of angels and spirits, and in the resurrection of the dead; (Acts xiii, 8.) but Josephus tells us, that their notion of the immortality of the soul, was the Pythagorean metempsychosis. From the Pharisees, whose tenets and traditions the people generally received, it is evident that the disciples of our blessed Lord had adopted the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. See John ix, 1-4; Matt. xvi, 14; Luke ix, 19.†

3. They contended that God was bound to bless the Jews, and make them all partakers of the terrestrial kingdom of the Messiah; to justify them, make them eternally happy, and that he could not possibly damn them! They derived the cause of their justification from the merits of Abraham, their knowledge of God, their practising the rite of circumcision, and from the sacrifices they offered. To their notion of works being meritorious, St. Paul alludes in his epistle to the Romans, particularly in chap. i, to xi.

4. They were the strictest of all the Jewish sects, and accordingly affected a singular probity of manners according to their system, which, however, was in general very lax and corrupt.

5. They were also very singular for their observance of the traditions of the elders. These traditions, they pretended, had been handed down from Moses through every generation, but were not committed to writing;

*Joseph. Antiq. Jud. lib. xviii, c. 1. et alibi.

+ Dr. Lightfoot's Works, vol. ii, pp. 568, 569; Harwood's Introd. vol. ii, p. 355; Rev. T. H. Horne's Introd. vol.i, p.167.

and they considered them not merely as of equal authority with the Divine law, but even preferable to it. "The words of the Scribes," said they, "are lovely above the words of the law for the words of the law are weighty and light, but the words of the scribes are all weighty."*

3. OF THE ESSENES.---The Essenes were the most holy and pure of all the Jewish sects. They were divided into two classes: 1. The practical, who lived in society, and some of whom were married, though it appears, with great circumspection. These dwelt in cities and their neighbourhoods, and applied themselves to rural employments and other occupations. 2. The contemplative, who were also denominated Therapeutæ or Physicians, from their application principally to the cure of the diseases of the soul, devoted themselves wholly to meditation, and avoided living in great towns as unfavourable to a contemplative life. Both classes were exceedingly abstemious, exemplary in their moral deportment, averse from profane swearing, and most rigid in their observance of the sabbath. They held the immortality of the soul, but denied the resurrection of the body, they believed in the existence of angels, and a future state of rewards and punishments. They believed also that every thing was ordered by an eternal fatality, or chain of causes. Though the Essenes are not expressly mentioned by name in any of the sacred writings, yet divines have conjectured that they are

*See Dr. Lightfoot's Heb. and Talm. Exercit. on Matt. xv; Works, vol. ii, p. 199. And for a more particular and full account of the Pharisees, see Rev. T. H. Horne's Introd. vol. i, pp. 166--171; and Jenning's Jewish Antiq. pp. 226--234.