I could tell you other stories of their ridiculous affectations:
but I shall not. They would only make you smile: and we could not
judge them fairly, not being able to make full allowance for the
difference of customs between the Jews and ourselves. Many of the
things which our Lord blames them for, were not nearly so absurd in
Judea of old, as they seem to us in England now. Indeed, no one but
our Lord seems to have thought them absurd, or seen through the
hollowness and emptiness of them:--as he perhaps sees through, my
friends, a great deal which is thought very right in England now.
Making allowance for the difference of the country, and of the
times, the Pharisees were perhaps no more affected, for Jews, than
many people are now, for Englishmen. And if it be answered, that
though our religious fashions now-a-days are not commanded expressly
by the Bible or the Prayer Book, yet they carry out their spirit:--
remember, in God's name, that that was exactly what the Pharisees
said, and their excuse for being righteous above what was written;
and that they could, and did, quote texts of Scripture for their
phylacteries, their washings, and all their other affectations.
Another reason I have for not dwelling too much on these
affectations; and it is this.
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