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7. But now, if any one hath a mind to come over to their sect, he is not immediately admitted but he is prescribed the same method of living which they use for a year, while he continues excluded, and they give him also a small hatchet, and the forementioned girdle, and the white garment. And when he hath given evidence, during that time, that he can observe their continence, he approaches nearer to their way of living, and is made a partaker of the waters of purification; yet is he not even now admitted to live with them; for after this demonstration of his fortitude, his temper is tried two more years, and if he appear to be worthy, they then admit him into their society. And before he is allowed to touch their common food, he is obliged to take tremendous oaths, that, in the first place, he will exercise piety towards God, and then that he will observe justice towards men, and that he will do no harm to any one, either of his own accord, or by the command of others; that he will always hate the wicked, and be assistant to the righteous; that he will ever shew fidelity to all men, and especially to those in authority; because no one obtains the government without God's assistance; and that if he be in authority, he will at no time whatever abuse his authority, nor endeavour to outshine his subjects, either in his garments, or any other finery; that he will be perpetually a lover of truth, and propose to himself to reprove those that tell lies; that he will keep his hands clear from theft, and his soul from unlawful gains; and that he will neither conceal any thing from those of his own sect nor discover any of their doctrines to others, no not though any one should compel him so to do at the hazard of his life. Moreover he swears to communicate their doctrines to no one any otherwise than as he received them himself; that he will abstain from robbery, and will equally preserve the books belonging to their sect, and the names of the *angels rule not to swear at all. The case is the same in Christianity, as we learn from the Apostolical Constitutions, which, although they agree with Christ, and St. James, in forbidding to swear in general, ch. v 12 ch vi 23. yet do they explain it elsewhere, by avoiding to swear falsely, and to swear often and in vain, ch ii. 36 and again, by not swearing at all, but withal adding, that if that cannot be avoided to swear truly, ch vii 8.; which abundantly explain to us the nature of the measures of this general injunction.

This mention of the names of angels, so particularly preserved by the Essens, (if it means more than those messengers which were

[or messengers.] These are the oaths by which they secure their proselytes to themselves.

8. But for those that are caught in any heinous sins, they cast them out of their society, and he who is thus separated from them, does often die after a miserable manner; for as he is bound by the oath he hath taken, and by the customs he hath been engaged in, he is not at liberty to partake of that food that he meets with elsewhere, but is forced to eat grass, and to famish his body with hunger, till he perish; for which reason they receive many of them again, when they are at their last gasp, out of compassion to them, as thinking the miseries they have endured till they came to the very brink of death, to be a sufficient punishment for the sins they had been guilty of.

9. But in the judgments they exercise they are most accu rate and just, nor do they pass sentence by the votes of a court that is fewer than an hundred. And as to what is once determined by that number, it is unalterable. What they most of all honour, after God himself, is the name of their legislator [Moses] whom if any one blaspheme he is punished capitally. They also think it a good thing to obey their elders, and the major part. Accordingly, if ten of them be sitting together, no one of them will speak while the other nine are against it. They also avoid spitting in the midst of them, or on the right side. Moreover, they are stricter than any other of the Jews in resting from their labours on the sev enth day; for they not only get their food ready the day be fore, that they may not be obliged to kindle a fire on that day, but they will not remove any vessel out of its place, nor go to stoo! thereon. Nay on other days, they dig a small pit a foot deep, with a paddle (which kind of hatchet is given them, when they are first admitted among them,) and covering them. selves round with their garment, that they may not affront the

employed to bring them the peculiar books of their sect,) looks like a prelude to that worshipping of angels blamed by St. Paul, as superstitious, and unlawful, in some such sort of people as these Essens were, Coloss ii. 8. as is the prayer to, or towards the sun for his rising every morning, mentioned before, § 5. very like those not much later observations made mention of in the preaching of Peter, Au thent. Rec. Part ii. page 669. and regarding a kind of worship of angels, of the month, and of the moon, and not celebrating the new moons, or other festivals, unless the moon appeared. Which indeed seems to me the earliest mention of any regard to the moon's phasis in fixing the Jewish calendar; of which the Talmud and later rabbins talk so much, and upon so little very ancient foundation.

divine rays of light, they ease themselves into that pit, after which they put the earth that was dug out again into the pit; and even this they do only in the more lonely places, which they choose out for this purpose; and although this easement of the body be natural, yet it is a rule with them to wash themselves after it, as if it were a defilement to them.

10. Now after the time of their preparatory trial is over, they are parted into four classes; and so far are the juniors inferior to the seniors, that if the seniors should be touched by the juniors, they must wash themselves, as if they had intermixed themselves with the company of a foreigner. They are long lived also, insomuch that many of them live above an hundred years, by means of the simplicity of their diet, nay, as I think, by means of the regular course of life they observe also. They contemn the miseries of life, and are above pain, by the generosity of their mind. And as for death, if it will be for their glory, they esteem it better than living always; and indeed our war with the Romans gave abundant evidence what great souls they had in their trials, wherein, although they were tortured and distorted, burnt and torn to pieces, and went through all kinds of instruments of torment, that they might be forced either to blaspheme their legislator, or to eat what was forbidden them, yet could they not be made to do either of them, no nor once to flatter their tormentors, or to shed a tear; but they smiled in their very pains, and laughed those to scorn who inflicted the torments upon them, and resigned up their souls, with great alacrity, as expecting to receive them again.

11. For their doctrine is this, that bodies are corruptible, and that the matter they are made of is not permanent; but that the souls are immortal, and continue for ever, and that they come out of the most subtile air, and are united to their bodies as to prisons, into which they are drawn by a certain natural enticement; but that when they are set free from the bonds of the flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward. And this is like the opinion of the Greeks, that good souls have their habitation beyond the ocean, in a region that is neither oppressed with storms of rain, or snow, or with intense heat, but that this place is such as is refreshed by the gentle breathing of a west wind, that is perpetually blowing from the ocean; while they allot to bad souls a dark and tempestuous den full of never ceasing punish ments. And indeed the Greeks seem to me to have fol

lowed the same notion, when they allot the islands of the blessed to their brave men, whom they call heroes, and demi-gods; and to the souls of the wicked the region of the ungodly in Hades, where their fables relate that certain persons, such as Sisyphus, and Tantalus, and Ixion, and Tityus are punished; which is built on this first supposition, that souls are immortal; and thence are those exhortations to virtue, and dehortations from wickedness collected, whereby good men are bettered in the conduct of their life by the hope they have of reward after their death, and whereby the vehement inclinations of bad men to vice are restrained, by the fear and expectation they are in, that although they should lie concealed in this life, they should suffer immortal punishment after their death. These are the divine doctrines of the Essens * about the soul, which lay an unavoidable bait for such as have once had a taste for their philosophy.

12. There are also those among them who undertake tof foretel things to come, by reading the holy books, and using several sorts of purification, and being perpetually conversant in the discourses of the prophets; and it is but seldom that they miss in their predictions.

13. Moreeover, there is another order of Essens, who agree with the rest as to their way of living, and customs, and laws, but differ from them in the point of marriage, as thinking that by not marrying they cut off the principal part of human life, which is the prospect of succession; nay rather, that if all men should be of the same opinion, the whole race of mankind would fail. However, they try their spouses for three years, and if they find that they have their natural purgations thrice, as trials that they are likely to be fruitful, they then actually marry them. But they do not use to accompany with their wives when they are with child, as a demonstration that they do not marry out of regard to

* Of these Jewish or Essene, and indeed Christian doctrines concerning souls, both good and bad, in Hades, see that excellent discourse or homily, of our Josephus' concering Hades, at the end of vol. vi.

Dean Aldrich reckons up three examples of this gift of prophecy in several of these Essens, out of Josephus himself, viz. in the History of the War. B. i. ch iii. § 5, vol. v. Judas foretold the death of Antigonus at Strato's Tower; B. ii. ch. vii. § 3, Simon foretold that Archelaus should reign but nine or ten years; and Antiq B. xv. ch x. §4, 5, vol. iii. Menehem foretold that Herod should be king, and should reign tyrannically, and that for more than twerty or even thirty years. All which came to pass accordingly.

pleasure, but for the sake of posterity. Now the women go into the baths with some of their garments on, as do the men with somewhat girded about them And these are the cus

toms of this order of Essens.

14. But then as to the other two orders as first mentioned, the Pharisees are those who are esteemed most skilful in the exact explication of their laws, and introduce the first sect. These ascribe all to fate, [or providence,] and to God, and yet allow, that to act what is right, or the contrary, is principally in the power of men; although fate does not co-operate in every action. They say, that all souls are incorrup tible, but that the souls of good men only are removed into other bodies, but that the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment. But the Sadducees are those that compose the second order, and take away fate entirely, and suppose that God is not concerned in our doing or not doing what is evil; and they say, that to act what is good, or what is evil, is at men's own choice, and that the one or the other belongs so to every one, that they may act as they please. They also take away the belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades. Moreover, the Pharisees are friendly to one another, and are for the exercise of concord and regard for the public; but the behaviour of the Sadducees one towards another is in some degree wild, and their conversation with those that are of their own party, is as barbarous as if they were strangers to them. And this is what I had to say concerning the philosophical sects among the Jews.

one,

There is so much more here about the Essens, than is cited from Josephus in Porphyry and Eusebius, and yet so much less about the Pharisees and Sadducees, the other two Jewish sects, than would naturally be expected in proportion to the Essens or third sect, nay than seems to be referred to by himself elsewhere, that one is tempted to suppose Josephus had at first written less of the and more of the two others than his present copies afford us; as also, that, by some unknown accident, our present copies are here made up of the large edition in the first place, and ofthe smaller in the second See the note in Havercamp's edition. However, what Josephus says in the name of the Pharisees, that only the souls of good men go out of one body into another, although all souls be immortal, and still the souls of the bad are liable to eternal punishment; as also what he says afterwards, Antiq. B. xviii. chap. i. § 3. vol. iv. that the soul's vigour is immortal, and that under the earth they receive rewards or punishments according as their lives have been virtuous or vicious in this present world; that to the bad is allot

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