The reception of.the new doctrine varied according to the circumstances in which the apostles were placed. In general, however, it met with a very great degree of opposition, and the preachers were frequently re duced to the necessity of exercising their functions at •ne hazard of their lives.
The Jews, having persecuted our Saviour from the commencement of his ministry, and having at length succeeded in putting him to death, could not be ex pected to treat his disciples with greater lenity. At this time, there were three sects, or descriptions of men, considered in a religious and political point of view, among the Hebrew people; and each of these sects seemed to vie with the others, in marked and zealous opposition to the Christian cause. However much they differed from one another in the principles which they professed, they agreed in rejecting the claims of Jesus; they considered him as a pretender to the character of the Messiah ; anu thought it not only innocent, but me ritorious, as well as necessary, to suppress the religion which he taught.
The sects alluded to were the Pharisees, the Saddu cees, and the Essenes. The Essenes were the Thera petax of Judea ; a class of men who lived, or affected to live, in contemplative retirement, and to take no part in the concerns of the state. They are not men tioned in the sacred books ; but from other sources of information we learn, that they held the doctrine of the malignity of matter, ascribing all evil passions to the body, and attempting, by abstinence, silence, and other varieties of mortification, to purify the soul, and to pre pare it for heaven. While they acknowledged the law of Moses, they regarded the Pentateuch as a collection of allegorical and mysterious truths ; and of course the chief labour and difficulty of their theology, was to find the hidden meaning, the holy and celestial import which the literal enunciation was supposed to conceal. Of all the Jewish sects, the Essenes appear to have made, in point of fact, the least opposition to the progress of Christianity. The Sadducees were the unbelievers in religion. They denied the existence of angels or spi rits, contending, that man stood at the head of all the works which God had made ; and they rejected the no tion of the soul's immortality. Their scepticism, how ever, had its limits ; for they admitted the books of Moses, and received them as the communications of heaven to the great legislator of their nation ; but they refused the other parts of the sacred canon, except in so far as they contained the civil and political history of the Hebrew people. Though not remarkable for their numbers, they were of great consideration in the state. Their influence in the Sanhedrim was such as to render it necessary to court their favour. Many of the sect were rich, many of them learned ; and they enjoyed, almost exclusively, the patronage and pro tection of the great. During the course of our Savi our's ministry, they proposed to him many insidious questions, either with a view to confound him by their skill in argument, or to expose him to the resentment of the Roman procurator, or to the derision of the peo ple. And when the apostles of Jesus discoursed to
their hearers of a resurrection and a future judgment, doctrines so completely opposite to the tenets of the Sadducees, this powerful sect soon proved themselves to be the most violent of all the persecutors and op pressors of Christianity.
In point of numbers, however, as well as influence' over the public opinion, the Sadducees were constrained to yield to the Pharisees. This last was by far the most popular of the Jewish sects. Their errors, if not more deeply rooted, were more extensively diffused ; they pre sided in the schools ; they were the chief doctors of the law, the favourite expositors of the Levitical institute, and interpreters of the prophecies; and, in the estima tion of the multitude, they were the surest guides to a holy life. If the creed of the Sadducees was narrow, the Pharisees were ample believers. They received the books of Moses, and all the other parts of the Jewish scriptures which enter into the canon ; and they added to these their traditionary doctrine or oral law, which they represented as of equal obligation and value with the written statute itself. Many of precepts contain ed in this oral law, were in direct opposition, not only to the spirit, but even to the letter of the decalogue ; and as these precepts were not committed to writing, it was in the power of the Pharisees to alter or to modify them at pleasure. Hence it was that the precepts in question were so managed in the application, as to in crease the wealth, and support the pretensions, of this predominating sect. Hence it was that the Pharisees " devoured widows houses" with impunity, and " bound heavy burdens upon the poor, which they themselves would not touch with one of their fingers." And hence it was that our Saviour, after pronouncing a woe upon them, declares, that they had made void the law, that is the decalogue, and the precepts connected with it, or illustrative of its enactments, by their traditions. The character of the leading persons belonging to this sect was such, as to excite the highest aversion and disgust of every enlightened and well-regulated mind. They were very far from having attained to that pure and heavenly virtue which the people ascribed to them. Though most scrupulous and elaborate in the exercises of piety, they were not devout ; with long prayers in their mouths, they fancied themselves in need of no spiritual gift ; and while they enlarged their phylac teries, and paid tithe of mint, and aloes, and cumin, they neglected the great and necessary duties of jus tice, mercy, and truth. They afford us the most com plete specimens of meditated and consummate hypo crisy, and constitute the most perfect examples which the New Testament exhibits, of all that we are bound to avoid and to abhor.