entirely torn to pieces, or worn out by time. Nor do they either buy or sell any thing to one another, but every one of them gives what he hath to him that wanteth it, and receives from him again in lieu of it what may be convenient for himfelt; and although there be no requintal made, they are fully allowed to take what they want of whomfoever they please.

5. And as for their piety towards God, it is very extraordinary For before fun-rifing they !peak not a word about profane matters, but put up certain prayers, which they have received from their forefathers, as if they made a fupplication for its rifing. After this every one of them are fent away by their curators to exercife fome of thofe arts wherein they are fkilled, in which they labour with great diligence till the fifth hour. After which they affemble themfelves together again into one place, and when they have clothed themselves in white veils. they then bathe their bodies in cold water. And after this purification is over, they every one meet together in an apartment of their own, into which it is not permitted to any one of another feet to enter; while they go, after a pure manner, into the dining-room, as into a certain holy temple, and quietly fet themselves down; upon which the baker lays them loaves in order; the cook also brings a Single plate of one food, and fets it before every one of them; but a priest fays grace before meat, and it is unlawful for any one to taste of the food before grace he faid. The fame prieft, when he hath dined, fays grace again after meat; and when they begin, and when they end, they praife God, as he that bestows their food upon them; after which they lay afide their [white garments, and betake themselves to their labours again till the evening; then they return home to fupper, after the fame manner, and if there be any ftrangers there they fit down with them. Nor is there ever any clamour or difturbance to pollute their houfe, but they give every one leave to speak in their turn; which filence thus kept in their house appears to foreigners like fome tremendous my ftery; the cause of which is that perpetual fobriety they exercife, and the fame fettled measure of meat and drink that is allotted them, and that fuch as is abundantly fufficient for them.

6. And truly, as for other things, they do nothing but according to the injunctions of their curators; only these two things are done among them at every one's own free will, which are to affift those that want it, and to fhew mercy; for they are permitted of their own accord to afford fuccour to fuch as deferve it, when they ftand in need of it, and to beflow food on thofe that are in diftrefs; but they cannot give any thing to their kindred without the curators. They dif pense their anger after a juft manner, and restrain their paffion. They are eminent for fidelity, and are the minifters of peace; whatfoever they lay alfo is firmer than an oath; but fwearing

is avoided by them, and they esteem it worse than perjury; for they lay, that he who cannot be believed, without [fwearing by God, is already condemned. They allo take great pains in ftudying the writings of the ancients and choose out of them what is moft for the advantage of their foul and body, and they enquire after fuch roots and medicinal ftones as may cure their diftempers.

7. But now, if any one hath a mind to come over to their fect, he is not immediately admitted, but he is prescribed the fame 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 obferve 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 demonftration of his fortitude, his temper is tried two more years, and if he appear to be worthy, they then admit him into their fociety. And before he is allowed to touch their common food, he is obliged to take tremendous oaths, that in the first place, he will exercile piety towards God and then that he will obferve juftice 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 affiftant to the righteous; that he will ever fhew fidelity to all men and especially to thofe in authority; becaule no one obtains the government without God's affiftance; and that if he be in authority, he will at no time whatever abuse his authority, nor endeavour to outfhine his subjects, either in his garments, or any other finery; that he will be perpetually a lover of truth, and propofe to himfelf to reprove thofe that tell lies; that he will keep his hands clear from theft, and his foul from unlawful gains; and that he will neither conceal any thing from those of his own fect, nor difcover any of their doctrines to others, no, not though any one fhould compel him fo to do at the hazard of his life. Moreover he fwears to communicate their doctrines to no one any other wife than as he received them himself; that

This practice of the Effens, in refusing to fwear, and efteeming wearing on ordinary occafions, worse than perjury, is delivered here in general words, as are the parallel injunctions of our Saviour, Matt. v. 34. xxiii. 16. and of St. James, v. 12. but all admit of particular exceptions, for folemn caufes, and on great and ne ceffary occafions. Thus these very Essens, who here do so zealously avoid swearing, are related, in the very next fection, to admit none till they take tremendous oaths to perform their leveral duties to God, and to their neighbour, without fuppofing they thereby break this rule not to fwear at all. The cafe is the fame in Christianity, as we learn from the Apoftolical Constitutions, which although they agree with Chrift, and St. James, in forbidding to fwear in general, ch. v. 12 ch. vi. 23 yet do they explain it elsewhere, by avoiding to wear fallely, and to fwear often and in vain," ch ii 36. and again, by "not fwearing at all," but withal adding, that "if that cannot be avoided, to fwear truly," ch vii. 3, ; which abundantly explain to us the nature of the measures of this general injunction.

he will abftain from robbery, and will equally preferve the books belonging to their feet, and the names of the angels [or meffengers. Thefe are the oaths by which they secure their profelytes to themselves.

8. But for thofe that are caught in any heinous fins, they call them out of their fociety, and he who is thus feparated from them, does often die after a miferable 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 famifh his body with hunger, till he perish; for which reason they receive many of them again, when they are at their laft gafp, out of compaffion to them, as thinking the miferies they have endured till they came to the very brink of death, to be a fufficient punishment for the fins they had been guilty of.

9. But in the judgments they exercise they are most accurate and juft, nor do they país fentence 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 legiflator [Mofes], whom if any one blafpheme he is punished capitally. They alfo think it a good thing to obey their elders, and the major part. Accordingly, if ten of them be fitting together, no one of them will Ipeak while the other nine are against it. They alfo avoid fpitting in the midst of them, or on the right fide. Moreover, they are stricter than any other of the Jews in refting from their labours on the feventh day; for they not only get their food ready the day before, that they may not be obliged to kindle a fire on that day, but they will not remove any veffel out of its place, nor go to ftool thereon. Nay, on other days they dig a fmall pit, a foot deep, with a paddle, (which kind of hatchet is given them, when they are firft admitted among them), and covering themlelves round with their garment that they may not affront the divine rays of light, they eafe 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 choofe out for this purpose; and although

This mention of the names of angels, so particular preferved by the Ellens, (if it means more than thote mefengers which were employed to bring them the peculiar books of their fect), looks like a prelude to that worshipping of angels, blamed by St Paul, as fuperititious, and unlawful, in fome fuch fort of people as these Effens were, Coloff. ii. 8 as is the prayer to, or towards the fun for his rising every morning, mentioned before, 95, very like thole not much later oblervances made mention of in the preaching of Peter, Authent. Rec Pt II. pag. 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, uniefs the moon appeared. Which indeed feems to me the earliest mention of any regard to the moon's phafs in fixing the Jewish calendar; of which the Talmud and letet rabbins talk to much, and upon fo little very ancient foundation.

VOL. III.

R

this easement of the body be natural, yet it is a rule with them to wash themfelves 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 claffes; and fo far are the juniors inferior to the feniors, that if the feniors fhould be touched by the juniors, they muft wash themselves, as if they had intermixed themfelves with the company of a foreigner. They are long-lived alfo, infomuch that many of them live above an hundred years, by means of the fimplicity of their diet, nay, as I think, by means of the regular courfe of life they obferve alfo. They contemn the miseries of life, and are above pain, by the generofity 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 fouls they had in their trials, wherein, although they were tortured and diftorted, burnt and torn to pieces, and went through all kinds of inflruments of torment, that they might be forced either to blafphere their legiflator, 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 fhed a tear; but they fmiled in their very pains, and laughed thofe to icorn who inflicted the torments upon them, and refigned up their fouls 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 fouls are immortal, and continue for ever, and that they come out of the moft fubtil air, and are united to their bodies as to prifons, into which they are drawn by a certain natural incitement; but that when they are fet tree from the bonds of the flesh, they then, as releafed from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward. And this is like the opinion of the Greeks, that good fouls have their habitations beyond the ocean, in a region that is neither oppreffed with forms of rain, or fnow, or with intenle heat, but that this place is fuch as is refreshed by the gentle breathing of a weft wind, that is perpetually blowing from the ocean; while they allot to bad fouls a dark and tempeftuous den, full of never-ceafing punishments. And indeed the Greeks feem to me to have followed the fame notion, when they allot the iflands of the bleffed to their brave men, whom they call heroes, and demigods; and to the fouls of the wicked, the region of the ungodly in Hades, where their fables relate that certain persons, fuch as Sify phus, and Tantalus, and Ixion, and Tity us, are punished; which is built on the firft fuppofition, that fouls are immortal; and thence are thofe exhortations to virtue, dehortations from wickednefs 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 incli

nations of bad men to vice are reftrained, by the fear and expectation they are in. that although they fhould lie concealed in this life they fhould fuffer immortal punishment after their death. Thefe are the divine doctrines of the Effens about the foul, which lay an unavoidable bait for fuch as have once had a tafle of their philofophy.

12. There are allo those among them who undertake to + foretel things to come, by reading the holy books, and using feveral forts of purifications, and being perpetually conver ant in the difcourfes of the prophets; and it is but feldom that they miss in their predictions.

13. Moreover, there is another order of Effens, who agree with the rest as to their way of living, and cuftoms, 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 lite, which is the profpećt of fucceffion; nay rather, that if all men fhould be of the fame opinion, the whole race of mankind would fail. However, they try their fpoules 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 demonftration that they do not marry out of regard to pleasure, but for the fake of pofterity. Now the women go into the baths with fome of their garments on, as the men do with fomewhat girded about them. And these are the customs of this order of Effens.

14. But then as to the two other orders as first mentioned, the Pharifees are thofe who are esteemed most skilful in the exact explication of their laws, and introduce the firft feet. Thefe afcribe 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 co-operate in every action. They fay, that all fouls are incorruptible, but that the fouls of good men only are removed into other bodies, but that the fouls of bad men are fubject to eter

Of these Jewish or Effene, and indeed Chriftian doctrines concerning fouls, both good and bad, in Hades, fee that excellent difcourfe or homily, of our Jofe phus's concerning Hades, at the end of Vol. III.

+ Dean Aldrich reckons up three examples of this gift of prophecy in feveral of thefe Effens out of Jofephus himself, viz. in the Hiftory of the War, B. I. ch. iii, §. 5. Vol. III. Judas foretold the death of Antigonus at Strato's Tower; B. II. chap. vii. 3. Simon foretold that Archelaus fhould reign but nine or ten years; and Antiq B. XV. chap x. 4. 5 Vol II. Menehem foretold that Herod fhould be king, and should reign tyrannically, and that for more than twenty of even thirty years. All which came to país accordingly.

There is fo much more here about the Effens, than is cited from Jofephus in Porphyry and Eufebius, and yet so much less about the Pharifees and Sadducees, the two other Jewish fects, than would naturally be expected in proportion to the Effens or third fect, nay than feems to be referred to by himself elsewhere, that one is tempted to suppose Jofephus had at first written lefs of the one, and more of the two others than his prefent copies afford us; as alfo, that, by lome unknown accident, our prefent copies are here made up of the larger edition in the first cafe,