The cardinal doctrines and practices of this sect are as follows:—They regarded the inspired Law of God with the utmost veneration. In fact, their adhesion to it was such that they were led thereby to pay the greatest homage to Moses, the lawgiver, and to visit with capital punishment any one of the brotherhood who blasphemed his name. The highest aim of their life was to become the temples of the Holy Ghost, when they could prophesy, perform miraculous cures, and, like Elias, be the forerunners of the Messiah. This they regarded as the last stage of perfection, which could only be reached by gradual growth in holiness, brought about through strictly observing the commandments and the Levitical laws of purity contained in the Pentateuch, mortifying the flesh and the lusts thereof, and being meek and lowly in spirit, inasmuch as this would bring them into closer communion with him who is the Holy One of Israel. This earnest desire to avoid everything which involved profanity in the slightest degree and which might interpose between them and the Deity, made them abstain from using oaths, because they regarded the invocation, in swearing, of heaven or the heavenly throne, or anything which represents God’s glory, as a desecration. Their communication was yea, yea; nay, nay; whatsoever was more than these came of evil. Their increased strictness in enforcing the observance of the rigid Mosaic Jaws of Levitical purity, which were afterwards amplified and rendered still more rigid by traditional explanations, [1] ultimately compelled the Essenes to withdraw themselves altogether from the society of their Jewish brethren, to form a separate community, and to live apart from the world, since contact with any one who did not practice these laws, or with anything belonging to such an one, rendered them impure. This fear of coming in contact with that which is impure, as well as the desire not to be hindered in their spiritual communion with their Creator, also made the Essenes abstain from marriage; inasmuch as women, according to the law, are subject to perpetual pollutions in menstruum and child-birth (compare Lev. xii, 1–8; xv, 19–31), and as going to one’s wife, even under ordinary circumstances, is regarded as defiling (vide infra, p. 39, note 19). There were, however, some weak brethren who could not be like the angels in heaven, neither marrying nor being given in marriage; these were allowed to take wives, but they could never advance to the highest orders of the brotherhood, and had, moreover, to observe laws specially enacted for married brethren and sisters.