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150 Miracles are as common as poor physicians. The Essenes are noted for both. They prophesy, work miracles, see visions, and have dreams, and stand in reputation as quack doctors. They pretend to know all about angels, ghosts, and spirits; they profess the art of managing ethereal citizens of transatmospheric regions. They live together in colonies, some of them are cenobitic and some are celibate communities. They maintain that all of them are priests and high priests; therefore their daily baptisms as the priests on duty. They wear the Levitical garments. Their tables are their altars, and their meals their only sacrifices. With this sanctimonious misanthropy, which is their highest virtue, they use the allegorical method of expounding the Scripture. While we think, and reason, and reflect, and use our faculties to obtain our ideas of duty, they shut their eyes and fold their hands, waiting to be endued with power from their God; and when they get it, it proves to be all to their own advantage and interest, to the ruin of their fellow-citizens. The Sadducees are another party, equally absurd. They get their doctrine from Antigonus Sochæus, who was President of the Sanhedrim. They reject all the traditions of the scribes and Pharisees. Then we find the sopher, or scribe. They are the writers and expounders of the law. The Pharisees (derived from Pharash, to separate) separate from all men on account of their sanctity. But it is useless to name all these sects, with their peculiar views, each differing from the other. They are all strict monotheists, yet