adhered to the natural meaning of the words: the Essens contended, that the words of the law, in their natural meaning, were void of all power; and that the things, expressed by them, were images of holy and celestial objects; they professed to renounce the outward letter, and to consider the law as an allegorical system of spiritual and mysterious truth. The Sadducees denied the resurrection and a future life; the Pharisees believed in the immortality of the soul, and a future state of rewards and punishments, which extended both to soul and body; the Essens believed in the immortality of the soul, and in a future state of rewards and punishments; but maintained that they extended to the soul alone. The Pharisees courted popular applause by an ostentation of public sanctity, and a rigid attention to the ceremonies of the written and traditionary law. The Sadducees treated the sanctity and ceremonies of the Pharisees with contempt, as marks of weakness and

superstition, and rested their own claim to respect on good actions and elegant manners. The Essens placed religion in contemplative indolence, which they thought debased by any social attachment to man. The doctrines of the Pharisees were popular with the multitude, those of the Sadducees with the great. The Essens were little known out of their own communities. It is observable that while the Gospel abounds with reproofs of the Pharisees and Sadducees, the Essens are not once named in it: but it is supposed that St. Paul, in his first Epistle to Timothy, and his Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, often refers to them.

III.3. It deserves attention that Michaelis, (Intr. Vol. III. Part I. § 2, 3, 4, 5), and other German writers have shown, that some passages, both of the Old and New Testament, and particularly the first Chapter of St. John's Gospel, refer to the tenets of the Gnostics and Sabians. The former were a

-species of Manichæans, who existed in the east, long before the birth of Christ; and several of their errors were fancifully accommodated by some of the earliest Christians to the second person of the Trinity, and the mysteries of the Incarnation and Passion.-The principal error of the latter, was, that they ascribed to St. John the Baptist, a greater authority, than to Christ. Michaelis contends, that, St. John the Evangelist begins his Gospel with a series of aphorisms, as counterpositions to the doctrine of these heretics, and afterwards relates several speeches and miracles of Christ, which the truth of these aphorisms pointedly confirms. The whole passage de

serves the reader's serious attention.

Such was the state of the religious sects among the Jews at the time of the birth of our Saviour. The Rabbins, or the teachers of each sect, defended their tenets with the greatest zeal and pertinacity.

III. 4. All of them, however, agreed in

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thinking that their religious tenets and observances were the only objects worthy of their attention. It followed, that their literary controversies, instead of embracing, like those of the philosophical sects of the Pagans, the wide circle of general literature, were directed and confined to their religion and religious institutions, and were exhausted in questions and discussions immediately, or remotely, referrible to those objects. They were sometimes striking by their refinement and abstruseness, but were often idle and visionary. These religious contentions necessarily produced a considerable effect on the language of the Jews; and, whether they expressed themselves in Greek or in Hebrew, led them to adopt new terms and expressions. These, which may be called Rabbinisms, frequently occur in the New Testament.

III. 5. Another peculiarity of the language of the New Testament, is its occasional Latinism. This was originally owing

to their political subserviency to the Romans. The celebrated prophecy of Jacob (Gen. xlix. 10.) had foretold, "that the

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sceptre should not depart from Judah, "nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until "the Shiloh should come." Both antient and modern Jews agree, that the Messiah was designed by the Shiloh. When the Assyrian monarch led the ten tribes of Israel into captivity, the sceptre departed from them, and the lawgiver from their feet. But, when the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin were carried captives to Babylon, they were permitted to live as a distinct people, under their own rulers and governors: and we find, that Cyrus ordered the vessels of the temple to be delivered to the Prince of Judah; 1 Esdras i. 8. Thus the sceptre and the lawgiver were preserved to Judah, and remained to him, till Judæa was reduced to a Roman province. The first interference of the Romans, as conquerors, in the affairs of Judæa, was in con