(printed p. 89 — Book II)
Since it has been shown that the doctrines and institutions of the Pharisees were either depraved, or at least depraved by them, and were contaminated with the stains of many quite serious sins, and since the Lord everywhere thunders against them so vehemently, so often, and so seriously, who in such a criminal and condemned people is innocent? Who is not evil? Who is not most damned?
Yet these vices did not belong either to the sect itself as such, nor to all who followed it. The first point can be understood from the Apostle, who in Acts 26:5, before Festus the Roman governor, King Agrippa, and a great gathering of judges and palace officials, says: “According to the strictest sect of our religion, I lived as a Pharisee.”
How, I ask, was the Pharisaic sect the strictest of all in Jewish worship and religion, if, by its own institution and first origin, it was fouled by so many crimes, superstitions, falsehoods, and absurdities? In Greek it is called hairesis akribestate, that is, the most exact and most accurate sect. And after Saint Paul, Josephus, book 2, chapter 12, calls the Pharisees by almost the same expression,
[margin: The Pharisaic sect was not evil in itself.]
(printed p. 90)
those who seemed to explain the legal ordinances with exactness. And in book 7 of the Antiquities, chapter 3, he says that they greatly prided themselves on the most exact part of the ancestral law of the Jews.
How could it be the most exact and most accurate sect if, in matters so illustrious and evident, and so relevant to the true worship of God and to the advantage of all, it fell so foully and shamefully by the force of its own axioms? How did the Pharisees understand and explain the ancestral law with the highest exactness, if their discipline necessarily urged the falsehoods, errors, and trifles indicated above?
Moreover, in the same passage of Acts, the same sect is called in Syriac ioulphana rischaja, that is, the first doctrine and institution, as Josephus also calls it in book 2, chapter 12, or the chief and principal one. But if the fictions and absurdities thus far reviewed were born by a kind of natural necessity from its own principles, how would it not rather be the very last and most despised of all sects? Or else, indeed, it would have to be said that in the Israelite religion nothing at that time was pure, clear, and sincere. For if what is judged best in some kind is worst, what will the rest be? What will the whole kind be, except vicious, polluted, and detestable?
As for the second point which I advanced, that the vices discussed above did not belong to all the Pharisees, does not the Apostle himself sufficiently indicate it in the same place?
[margin: Matthew 6:23; not all Pharisees were evil.]
(printed p. 91)
“From the beginning,” he says, “according to the strictest sect of our religion, I lived as a Pharisee”; and Acts 22:3, “nourished according to the truth,” or as above, the exactness, “of the law of the fathers.” And in Philippians 3:5: “If anyone else seems to trust in the flesh, I more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, according to the law a Pharisee.” And afterward, in verse 9, he says that in Christ Jesus he did not wish to have the justice which is from the law, in order that he might have that which is from the faith of Christ.
Therefore he had formerly been just according to that justice which was given not by the Pharisaic hypocrisy and wickedness explained so far, but by the law itself, especially because in the same place he says: “I conducted myself according to the justice which is in the law, without complaint.” Thus Saint Jerome plainly declares, in books 1 and 2 on Galatians, on chapter 3, that he was just with Mosaic justice.
What of Gamaliel, the Apostle’s own teacher, at whose feet he was instructed according to the truth of the paternal law, Acts 22:3? Was he not a Pharisee? Was he not an upright man, and alien from Pharisaic envy, blindness, and fury? When Saint Peter and the Apostles had been captured by the Jews, rebuked by the chief priest, and surrounded like lambs by savage wolves, by the Sadducees and others sitting in that deadly council, “a certain Pharisee in the council, named Gamaliel, a doctor of the law, honorable to all the people, rose,” Saint Luke says in Acts 5:34, “and ordered them to be put outside for a short time.” At last he freed them from their jaws,
(printed p. 92)
and finally joined himself to their number, as I explained in my Paul, numbers 10 and 11.
Moreover, John 3:1 says: “There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.” That he was an upright, simple man and a lover of truth appears from the whole conversation of Christ the Lord with him, and again from his defense of Christ the Lord in the council and from the anger of the other Pharisees against him, John 7:50 and following. Finally, after the Lord had been taken away in death, his hastening to prepare aromatic, lavish, and honorable burial spices, John 19:39, breathes nothing but a good man.
The man who received Christ the Lord, still an infant, into his arms, and sang the swan-song concerning his own dismissal, Luke 2:28 and following, was “a just and devout man, awaiting the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was in him,” verse 25 in the same place. The most exact character of this sect, of which I spoke above, and certain writers suggest that he too was of the Pharisaic institution; although they confuse him with another just Simeon, of whom more below under the founder of the Pharisees.
I pass over others, about whom I spoke in the same Paul, number 13, and reason thus: almost the same vices are charged by Christ the Lord against the lawyers, Luke 11, Matthew 23, and elsewhere, as against the Pharisees. Yet it is clear that those vices are not to be transferred either to the very office of knowing and explaining the law, or to all the experts in the law.
(printed p. 93)
Therefore the same, or at least an equal, judgment must be made concerning the Pharisaic sect and its followers: the same if the lawyers and Pharisees were the same people, equal if they were different. But more on this later.
Certainly Acts 15:5 affirms that, besides those whom I have counted, several others came to the faith of Christ the Lord, although some of these later caused disturbances; and likewise some of them came to the baptism of John, Matthew 3. Yet because very many from this order of Pharisees were wicked and criminal, for that reason the eternal wisdom of God warned, rebuked, and censured them in so many ways. It is customary for reprimands and rebukes of this kind to be made as if not even one person were good and free from fault, as in Isaiah 1:6 and Jeremiah 8:6 and 10.