term of a middle nature, not necessarily implying either good or bad. For, as to the disposition wherein those Jews were at this time, it is plain, they did not think themselves qualified to pronounce either for or against it, till they should give Paul, who patronised it, a full hearing. This they were willing to do; and, therefore, only acquainted him, in general, that they found it to be a party that was universally decried. Thus, in the historical part of the New Testament, we find the word dipsos employed to denote sect or party, indiscriminately, whether good or bad. It has no necessary reference to opinions, true or false. Certain it is, that sects are commonly, not always, caused by difference in opinion, but the term is expressive of the effect only, not of the cause.

§ 6. In order to prevent mistakes, I shall here further observe, that the word sect, among the Jews, was not, in its application, entirely coincident with the same term as applied by Christians to the subdivisions subsisting among themselves. We, if I mistake not, invariably use it of those who form separate communions, and do not associate with one another in religious worship and ceremonies. Thus we call Papists, Lutherans, Calvinists, different sects, not so much on account of their differences in opinion, as because they have established to themselves different fraternities, to which, in what regards public worship, they confine themselves, the several denominations above mentioned having no

intercommunity with one another in sacred matters. High church and low church we call only parties, because they have not formed separate communions. Great and known differences in opinion, when followed by no external breach in the society, are not considered with us as constituting distinct sects, though their differences in opinion may give rise to mutual aversion. Now, in the Jewish sects (if we except the Samaritans), there were no separate communities erected. The same temple, and the same synagogues, were attended alike by Pharisees and by Sadducees. Nay, there were often of both denominations in the Sanhedrim, and even in the priesthood.

Another difference was, that the name of the sect was not applied to all the people who adopted the same opinions, but solely to the men of eminence among them who were considered as the leaders and instructers of the party. The much greater part of the nation, nay, the whole populace, received implicitly the doctrine of the Pharisees, yet Josephus never styles the common people Pharisees, but only followers and admirers of the Pharisees. Nay, this distinction appears sufficiently from sacred writ. The Scribes and Pharisees, says our Lord, sit in Moses' seat. This could not have been said so generally, if any thing further had been meant by Pharisees, but the teachers and guides of the party. Again,

38 Matth. xxiii. 2.

when the officers sent by the chief priests to apprehend our Lord, returned without bringing him, and excused themselves by saying, Never man spake like this man; they were asked, Have any of the rulers, or of the Pharisees, believed on him? Now, in our way of using words, we should be apt to say, that all his adherents were of the Pharisees; for the Pharisaical was the only popular doctrine. But it was not to the followers, but to the leaders, that the name of the sect was applied. Here, however, we must except the Essenes, who, as they all, of whatever rank originally, entered into a solemn engagement, whereby they confined themselves to a peculiar mode of life, which, in a great measure, secluded them from the rest mankind, were considered almost in the same manner as we do the Benedictines or Dominicans, or any order of monks or friars among the Romanists.

Josephus in the account he has given of the Jewish sects, considers them all as parties who supported different systems of philosophy, and has been not a little censured for this, by some critics. But, as things were understood then, this manner of considering them was not unnatural. Theology, morality, and questions regarding the immortality of the soul, and a future state, were principal branches of their philosophy. Philosophia," says Cicero",

89 John, vii. 48.

90 Tuscul. Quæst. lib. I.

nos primum ad deorum cultum, deinde ad jus ho"minum quod situm est in generis humani socie "tate, tum ad modestiam, magnitudinemque animi "erudivit : eademque ab animo tanquam ab oculis,

caliginem dispulit, ut omnia supera, infera, prima, "ultima, media, videremus." Besides, as it was only men of eminence qualified to guide and instruct the people, who were dignified with the title, either of Pharisee or of Sadducee, there was nothing so analogous among the Pagans, as their different sects of philosophers, the Stoics, the Academics, and the Epicureans, to whom also the general term apeσis was commonly applied. Epiphanius, a Christian writer of the fourth century, from the same view of things with Josephus, reckons among the apeσes, αιρεσεις, sects, or heresies, if you please to call them so, which arose among the Greeks, before the coming of Christ, these classes of philosophers, the Stoics, the Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and the Epicureans. Of this writer it may also be remarked, that in the first part of his work, he evidently uses the word aupeois in all the latitude in which it had been employed by the sacred writers, as signifying sect or party of any kind, and without any note of censure. Otherwise he would never have numbered Judaism, whose origin he derives from the command which God gave to Abraham to circumcise all the males of his family, among the original heresies. Thus, in laying down the plan of his work, he says, Ev to 8v πρωτω βιβλιο πρωτο τομε αιρεσεις εικοσιν, αι εισιν

1

ειδε, βαρβαρισμος, σκυδισμός, ελληνισμός, ινδαισμος, x. 7. ε.". This only by the way.

§ 7. BUT, it may be asked, is not the acceptation of the word, in the Epistles, different from what it has been observed to be in the historical books of the New Testament? Is it not, in the former, invariably used in a bad sense, as denoting something wrong, and blameable? That in those, indeed, it always denotes something faulty, or even criminal, I am far from disputing: nevertheless, the acceptation is not materially different from that in which it always occurs in the Acts of the Apostles. In order to remove the apparent inconsistency in what has been now advanced, let it be observed, that the word sect has always something relative in it; and therefore, in different applications, though the general import of the term be the same, it will convey a favourable idea, or an unfavourable, according to the particular relation it bears. I explain myself by examples. The word sect may be used along with the proper name, purely by way of distinction from another party, of a different name; in which case the word is not understood to convey either praise or blame. Of this we have examples in the phrases, above quoted, the sect of the Pharisees, the sect of

91 This import of the word heresy in Epiphanius has not escaped the observation of the author of Dictionnaire Historique des auteurs Ecclesiastiques, who says, "Par le mot d' "hérésies, St. Epiphane entend une secte ou une societé d' "hommes qui ont, sur la religion, des sentimens particuliers."