Wesley Corpus

sat in Moses' seat, and explained those por tions of it which, through their blindness and weakness of understanding, they would otherwise have remained ignorant concerning. They are sometimes called by the name of Rabbi, which signifies master one that had been brought up in the schools of the prophets, and was licensed to teach a set of disciples or followers the weighty matters of the law. The pharisees were the most rigid sect of the Jews, men who obliged themselves to the strictest observance of the things required by the law ; and were distinguished by placing .their conduct under some restraints which were not obligatory, and denying themselves such liberties as were by the law allowed to the people; and hence they derive their name from a word which signifies to distinguish or separate. Now both these sets of men, we may imagine, pretended to extraordinary degrees of piety. The very title of pharisee implies a recluse per son, or one who separated himself from his brethren by the remarkable rigour of his life and conversation ; and one scarcely can sup pose that those scribes who were entrusted with the education of young people could be other than sober and moral, as well as grave and learned persons ; and indeed we find their characters to have been such. They were dis tinguished by leading austere lives, and pro fessing strict doctrines. They observed great sanctity and severity of behaviour, were regu lar in their public offices of devotion, fasted and prayed often, and gave much alms. They were zealous for the law to excess, and reve renced the institutions thereof as divine ap pointments deserve to be reverenced. In short, there was nothing in their exterior behaviour but what was becoming in teachers of religion, edifying and exemplary. They manifested the highest regard to God, the greatest veneration to things and persons appropriated to his ser vice, and the severest resentment of any pro fanation of them. Such was the righteousness of the scribes and pharisees of old, which our blessed Saviour declares not to be sufficient to bring any one to the possession of his kingdom ; which leads me to my second general head, wherein I am