(printed p. 117 — Book II)
From what has been said, it is clear that, speaking generally, there was a heresy and sect of the Pharisees. But in order that these same men should seem to have been in a wicked and impious heresy even in the state of the Mosaic law itself, some appeal to the things brought above from Saint Epiphanius, Philastrius, Saint Jerome, and also from their own statements about fate, and from many other corruptions of the divine law.
It seems to me that a threefold distinction must be applied: of Pharisaic doctrines, of the Pharisees themselves, and of time. First, their doctrines, as we saw above, were not all wicked in themselves, nor all joined with error. Second, not all Pharisees embraced all wicked doctrines or defended them obstinately. I always except the matters that concern the highest head of our religion, Christ the Lord. Indeed perhaps none, or very few, did so. For I find nowhere that any judgment was brought, either against their doctrines or against them,
[margin: Hunnius is cited in the margin. Response by a threefold distinction: doctrines and Pharisees.]
(printed p. 118)
by the Church of that time, or by the Mosaic chair; nor is there even a suitable cause for suspecting it, since, as we saw above, the chair’s right and power had come to them.
Finally, some things were tolerated in that time because of obscurity and a lesser understanding of divine realities. Among Christians they could no longer be tolerated; rather, they have either already been proscribed as errors and heresies, or, if someone were to bring them forward again, they would immediately be proscribed.
Speaking generally, therefore, it seems that one should say that there were indeed certain doctrines of the Pharisees which in themselves, and as the school is accustomed to speak, materially were heretical. Yet the Pharisees were not properly heretics, or certainly not all of them. Only those would be such who are called fatui, not in the manner in which Beza preferred to render the fatui of Matthew 23 as “fools,” but in the way Saint Augustine says in tractate 37 on John: “If your heart were not foolish, you would not believe in fate”; or else those entangled in certain other similar errors, if they obstinately defended them against the judgment of the Church.
But when Saint Epiphanius calls it a heresy, either he uses the name heresy generally for both the good and the bad side; or he judges them heretics because of doctrines that, as I said, were materially heretical; or he speaks on account of the assertions about fate. In this latter way the Apostolic Constitutions, book 6, chapter 6, seem to speak,
[margin: Distinction of time. Which Pharisees were heretics.]
(printed p. 119)
as do Saint Jerome in the cited passage and Philastrius. Yet in this matter there seems to be room for what Saint Augustine says in his letter to Quodvultdeus: not all people seem to judge the same thing about some doctrine, whether it is a heresy or not.
If the Pharisees had been not only sinners but also heretics, would the Lord have eaten with them so often and so familiarly? Would he, who charged them with hypocrisy and other vices, never have charged them with heresy? Would he have said that they sat upon Moses’ chair, and prescribed that they themselves were to be heard in all things? Would Scripture have nowhere struck them with this same accusation, as it struck them with so many other and so serious ones? Would the Apostle have called this sect, that is, the sect of Jewish worship by which God was then truly worshiped, the most certain and the most exact? What similar thing is ever said about the Sadducees? But of these things later.
Certainly among the chief sayings of Rabbi Hillel, which I will cite elsewhere, this is not the least: that he forbids anyone to separate himself from the Church. Indeed he does so in such a way that he uses the very word parash, as if he said: “Although by certain institutions you separate yourself from the common way of life of others, beware nevertheless that you do not separate yourself from the Catholic Church.”
It is very good, then, that Drusius does not differ at all on this point, since he often calls the Pharisees pious, and indeed in a general way, insofar as that name is opposed to the Sadducees and other impious men, page 5 and 6.16.
[margin: Below, chapter 17.]
(printed p. 120)