Besides the penalties of the Mosaic law, the sect has a formidable means of discipline in expulsion, or as it is called “separation from the Purity,” which may in some cases be inflicted even on the testimony of one witness (9 21 ff.). Josephus vividly depicts the desperate straits into which those came who, for grave offences, were expelled from the Essene order; being unable to eat food not prepared by members of the order, they were exposed to starvation. This particular consequence would not follow separation from our sect; but the lot of the excommunicated man was evidently hard enough. “When his deeds come to light he is to be expelled from the congregation, as though his lot had never fallen in the midst of the disciples of God; according to his misdeeds men shall bear him in remembrance ... until the day when he returns to take his place in the station of the men of perfect holiness. No man shall have any dealings with him in matters of property or work, for all the saints of the Most High have cursed him” (20 3 ff.); such have no part in the “house of the law”; their names are erased from the rolls of the congregation (20 10 f.). They are not only cut off from the communion of saints in this world, but are doomed to extermination by the hand of Belial (8 1 f., 19 14 f.). One who leads men astray and profanes the Sabbath and the festivals shall not be put to death, but shall be committed to the custody of men;(57) if he is cured of his error, they shall keep him for seven years, and afterwards he may come into the assembly (12 3 ff.). A member of the sect who seduces others to apostasy is more severely dealt with: “A man over whom the spirits of Belial have rule,(58) and who advocates defection (Deut. 13 6), shall be judged according to the law of the necromancer and the wizard” (12 2 f.; cf. Deut. 18 9).(59)