17. The measure of liberty and comfort allowed to the Jews by the Romans was well nigh wholly dissipated, first by the cruelty and avarice of the governors, and by the frauds and rapacity of the publicans; and second, by the profligacy and crimes of those who pretended to be patriots and guardians of the nation. Their principal men, their high priests, were abandoned wretches, who had purchased their places by bribes or by deeds of iniquity, and who maintained their ill-acquired authority by every species of dishonest acts. The other priests and all who held any considerable office, were not much better. The multitude, excited by such examples, ran headlong into every sort of iniquity, and by their unceasing robberies and seditions they excited against themselves both the justice of God and the vengeance of man. 18. Religious Divisions.--Two religions may be said to have flourished in Palestine at the times of which we write; viz., the Jewish and the Samaritan; between the followers of which there was a deadly hatred. The nature of the former is set forth in the Old Testament. But in the age of the Savior it had been corrupted by the traditions of the people, who were divided into sects filled with bitterness against each other. Chief among these sects were the Pharisees [Fa-ri-sees,] and Sadducees [Sad-du-seez.] 19. Pharisees and Sadducees.--While these two sects agreed as to a number of fundamental principles of the Jewish religion, they differed on questions of the highest importance, and such as related to the salvation of the soul. First, they disagreed respecting the law which God had given them. The Pharisees superadded to the written law an oral or unwritten law, handed down by tradition, which the Sadducees rejected, adhering alone to the written law. They differed, too, as to {28} the import of the law. The Pharisees held to a double sense of the scripture, the one literal, the other figurative; while the Sadducees held only to the literal sense of the Bible. To these contests concerning the laws were added others on subjects of the highest moment; particularly in respect to the rewards and punishments announced in the sacred writings. The Pharisees supposed them to affect both body and spirit--in whose pre-existence and eternal existence they believed--and that punishments and rewards extended beyond the present life. The Sadducees believed in no future retributions. They were sceptical of the miraculous; and denied the existence of spiritual beings, the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body. They were deists, in fact; viewing the Supreme Being as a quiescent Providence calmly surveying and ruling the regular working of natural laws. They gave themselves up to ease, luxury, self-indulgence, and were not indisposed to view with indifferent liberality the laxity of heathen morals and the profanity of idol worship. They included in their numbers the leading men of the nation, were the aristocracy in