shipper would even thus have contained the confession of his sinfulness; but it would not have ex

the rest of the men of their age and nation-adultery, as such, lasciviousness, and impurity in the special or limited sense of the word, are synonymous; and a tendency to any one of these things is a tendency to the rest, the presence of any of them may justly be considered to imply that of the rest. Now on the first of the occasions, which we have referred to, Luke xi. 44, we find our Saviour comparing the Pharisees to tombs or graves, which were not manifest, and men walking on the tops of which were not aware of them: and upon the second, Matt. xxiii. 27, 28, to whited or whitewashed sepulchres, made beautiful externally by such an embellishment-but inwardly full of the bones of dead men, and of all kinds of impurity. The point upon which these two comparisons turn respectively, is different in each instance, but the conclusion to which they lead concerning the characters of the persons so compared, is the same in both. A grave not seen, nor known to be a grave, is a different thing from a grave which is seen, and known to be what it is, by being whitewashed and rendered conspicuous; yet the impurity of both internally must be the same, though in the one case, the impurity is not even suspected, because the source of it even is not known-in the other, the beauty of the exterior, the effect of the wash, is only the more forcibly contrasted with the filth and uncleanness known to be within. So was it with the Pharisees. Men, who could judge of them only from what they appeared, could not know that they were even the reverse of what they seemed to be; God, who could look into their hearts, saw them to be full of iπóкρiσis and avoμía, like graves externally decorated, but abounding internally in impurity.

Now to contrast the interior of the Pharisee, with his exterior, as the inside of a whited sepulchre must be contrasted with the outside-is to compare what is filth and uncleanness, in the strictest sense of the word, with what is clean, and neat, and charming to the eye in the strictest sense also; and as imóκpiσis is that which answers to the latter in their case -UTÓKρiσs which as so used is equivalent to sanctimony-what can it be that will answer to the former, in the same case, but lasciviousness-incontinence-the moral filth and impurity pro

pressed the peculiarity of his feelings under that sense of his sinfulness, nor the individuality of duced by sensual desires and sensual indulgences? I know of nothing which is so properly uncleanness, in a moral sense, answerable to the rottenness of a grave or charnel house, as that. And were there any doubt, whether our Saviour meant to charge them here with this particular kind of impurity or not, it would be removed by the testimony of Matt. xxiii. 25-produced before : οὐαὶ ὑμῖν ... καὶ ̓ΑΚΡΑΣΙΑΣ. ̓Ακρασία in Greek is what we mean by incontinence in English; and very little dif ferent from what must be understood by ȧkodavía itself.

But further to establish the same charge against the whole body of the sect, I would remind the reader of a designation which our Lord twice addresses to the Pharisees, under such circumstances as shew it to have been specifically applicable to them, Matt. xii. 39. and xvi. 4: уeveà пovηрà κai poixaxis. If poxaxis here cannot be understood figuratively, it must be understood literally; and if it is to be understood literally, then it will follow that among the vices to which the men of this generation, more especially the Scribes and Pharisees, were notoriously addicted, this of being adulterers-of a proneness to adultery-was among the most infamous and characteristic. Now no one will contend that this epithet is here figuratively to be understood; for if so, it would describe a nation or generation spiritually adulterous, that is to say, guilty or liable to be guilty of spiritual fornication, or adultery; which in the language of scripture is simply idolatry, or forsaking the service of the true God for the service of idols. Of this kind of adultery the Jews of our Saviour's time were not guilty, nor liable to be guilty; whatever their forefathers might have been. The epithet of adulterous therefore, twice applied to them by our Lord, must be literally understood.

The remarkable story, related in John viii. 1, seq. of the woman taken in adultery, and brought to our Saviour, in the temple, about six months before the present time, will be found to illustrate this assertion; and to shew to what an extent at this juncture the vice in question was prevalent among all orders and descriptions of persons, the Scribes and Pharisees not excepted. They who brought the woman are said to have been the Scribes and the Pharisees; and, considering that they

that character as a sinner, which under those feelings he wished to fix upon himself. The latter part

brought her, after having detected her, as they represented it, in the very act, the first circumstance which strikes us as extraordinary is, why they should have brought the woman, and not also the man. But if we reflect further, that the place was the temple, the time early in the morning, just with the commencement of the morning service there, we shall consider it, perhaps, probable, that the male offender was one of their own number, some one at least connected with the temple; and that that was the reason, why they let him go and brought only the woman. Be this however as it may, our Lord's answer to them, when they continued urging him to decide somewhat concerning the disposal of the woman, was, ὁ ἀναμάρτητος ὑμῶν πρῶτος βαλéTO Tòv Xídov. By the appointment of the Law, the hand of the witnesses, whose evidence had been instrumental in convicting a criminal, was to be the first in carrying into execution the punishment enacted against his offence and to this appointment our Lord evidently referred in these words. But what did he mean, by ó ávaμáρтηTOS μov? him, that was guiltless among them, of any sin, or him that was guiltless among them, of this sin? Surely him that was guiltless among them, of this sin. For, can it be supposed that our Lord would put the propriety of a particular witness's being the first to execute the proper punishment of the law, against a proper offence in that law, on such a condition as that of the party's being himself conscious of no sin? Could the proper punishment of any crime committed against any one of the laws of God, be ever executed on such a condition as that? for who is there, who, however capable he may be of denouncing such and such a crime in another, has not some sin to answer for himself?

But if we suppose him to have meant, him that was guiltless of this particular offence, we shall perceive from the event that there was a remarkable significancy in his words. No witness against a particular crime, by whose evidence a particular criminal has been convicted of it, and made liable to the punishment denounced against it, if he is himself guilty of the same, is fit even to bear evidence against it, much less to begin the execution of the punishment denounced against it. The parties.

of his prayer should have been rendered, "God be "merciful to me THE sinner."

addressed by these words, whether guilty of other sins in general or not, seem certainly to have applied the words in this sense; for being convicted by their own conscience, as the evangelist tells us, they went out one after another, from the eldest down to the youngest, until our Saviour and the woman were left alone. Supposing all to have been alike habitually guilty of the crime of adultery, it is manifest that those who had lived longest would have most to answer for on that account; and therefore that the eldest, being convicted by their own conscience most of all, would begin to steal away first of all. If so, there was not one of this number, Scribes and Pharisees as they were, that had not been guilty of the crime of adultery; and the older they were, the more acts of sin of that kind were they conscious to themselves they had committed. What shall we say, then, to the boast of a particular Pharisee, that he was not an adulterer, like the rest of the men of his time?

I have thus shewn, I think, unequivocally upon the testimony of our Lord himself, that the Pharisees, taken as a body, were notoriously guilty of each of these vices in respect to which the Pharisee in the parable seems to oppose his own moral character to that of the rest of his countrymen; ἁρπαγὴ—ἀδικία— poxeía. In addition to this, let it be remembered, that on the testimony of St. Luke also, xvi. 14, as recorded in the account of the last parable but two, they are charged with being notoriously pápyupo a propensity which St. Paul denounces as the root of all evil-wherein he does but sanction the observation of the heathen poet,

and,

Effodiuntur opes, irritamenta malorum.

Quid non mortalia pectora cogis

Auri sacra fames?

St. Luke makes this observation upon them, to account for the offence which they took at our Saviour's declaration, "Ye cannot 66 serve God and mammon:" on which it has been well remarked, that it is the only instance in the gospel narrative, of what may be called the philosophy of history-or the explanation of effects by

The intensity of his contrition, under the conviction of his sinfulness, and the earnestness of his resolving them into their causes, and accounting for the conduct of individuals in particular instances, by referring to the principles which actuate them. The charge already considered, of devouring the houses of widows, is another proof of the same love of money in their case—and of the mean and unjustifiable arts, to which, for its gratification, it was wont to lead them.

But without specifying any longer, particular, vices or bad qualities, which, on the unexceptionable testimony of our Lord himself, might be laid to the charge of the Pharisees; would we obtain a just conception of their true moral character, can we go to a more expressive indication, than this of yevvýμara éxidvôv? the designation applied to them, Matt. iii. 7. Luke v. 7. first by John the Baptist; and twice after, in still stronger language, by our Saviour, Matt. xii. 34; xxiii. 34. ὄφεις, γεννήματα ἐχιδνῶν. For what can be understood by this designation, except the offspring or children of devils? the children of hell? as indeed they are called in so many words, Matt. xxiii. 15. οὐαὶ . . ὑμῖν γραμματεῖς καὶ Φαρισαῖοι, ὑποκριταὶ, ὅτι περιάγετε τὴν θάλασσαν καὶ τὴν ξηρὰν ποιῆσαι ἕνα προσήλυτον· καὶ ὅταν γένηται ποιεῖτε αὐτὸν υἱὸν γεέννης διπλότερον ὑμῶν: or how is it possible for abhorrence and reprobation, founded in the essential antipathy of absolute purity and goodness, to absolute malice and depravity, to be expressed in stronger terms than these, ὄφεις, γεννήματα ἐχιδνῶν, πῶς δύνασθε ἀγαθὰ λαλεῖν, πονηροὶ ὄντες; or, ὄφεις, γεννήματα ἐχιδνῶν, πῶς φύγητε ἀπὸ τῆς κρίσεως τῆς γεέννης ;

I have considered elsewhere, the first of the occasions which led to this severe rebuke; and have shewn that, when rightly explained and understood, nothing can more strongly illustrate the wickedness of the Pharisees of the present day; for it seems that in order to injure our Saviour, and to prevent the success of his miracles with the people, as far as lay in their power, they did not hesitate knowingly to blaspheme the Holy Ghost himself, and to say that the Holy Ghost was Beelzebub. See my Dissertations, vol. ii. xviii. 504-533.

Not to insist on the pride or vanity of the Pharisees, Luke xi. 43; xiv. 1. 3. 7: Mark iii. 38-40: Luke xx. 45-47 : Matt. xxiii. 6, 7: their love of the praise of men more than the praise of God, John v. 44; xii. 42, 43: and many other