ied in extreme agony from internal pains, being "eaten of
worms." He left one son, Agrippa, and three daughters, Drusilla, Berenice,
and Mariamne, the two first of whom married princes.

(M262) On his death Judea relapsed into a Roman province, his son,
Agrippa, being only seventeen years of age, and too young to manage such a
turbulent, unreasonable, and stiff-necked people as the Jews, rent by
perpetual feuds and party animosities, and which seem to have
characterized them ever since the captivity, when they renounced idolatry
forever.

(M263) What were these parties? For their opinions and struggles and
quarrels form no inconsiderable part of the internal history of the Jews,
both under the Asmonaean and Idumean dynasties.

(M264) The most powerful and numerous were the Pharisees, and most popular
with the nation. The origin of this famous sect is involved in obscurity,
but probably arose not long after the captivity. They were the orthodox
party. They clung to the Law of Moses in its most minute observances, and
to all the traditions of their religion. They were earnest, fierce,
intolerant, and proud. They believed in angels, and in immortality. They
were bold and heroic in war, and intractable and domineering in peace.
They were great zealots, devoted to proselytism. They were austere in
life, and despised all who were not. They were learned and decorous, and
pragmatical. Their dogmatism knew no respite or palliation. They were
predestinarians, and believed in the servitude of the will. They were seen
in public with ostentatious piety. They made long prayers, fasted with
rigor, scrupulously observed the Sabbath, and paid tithes to the cheapest
herbs. They assumed superiority in social circles, and always took the
uppermost seats in the synagogue. They displayed on their foreheads and
the hem of their garments, slips of parchment inscribed with sentences
from the law. They were regarded as models of virtue and excellence, but
were hypocrites in the observance of the weightier matters of justice and
equity. They were, of course, the most bitter adversaries of the faith
which Christ revealed, and were ever in the ranks of persecution. They
resembled the most austere of the Dominican monks in the Middle Ages. They
were the favorite teachers and guides of the people, whom they incited in
their various seditions. They were theologians who stood at the summit of
legal Judaism. "They fenced round their law hedges whereby