t they made this a general rule, that if any
part of the _Bible_ (except _Ecclesiastes_, because that excellent book
their sagacity accounted less holy than the rest) or their phylacteries,
or the strings of their phylacteries, were touched by one who had a
right to eat the truma, he might not eat it till he had washed his
hands. An evidence of that superstitious trifling, for which the
Pharisees and the later Rabbins have been so justly reprobated.

They were absurdly minute in the literal observance of their vows, and
as shamefully subtile in their artful evasion of them. The Pharisees
could be easy enough to themselves when convenient, and always as hard
and unrelenting as possible to all others. They quibbled, and dissolved
their vows, with experienced casuistry. Jesus reproaches the Pharisees
in Matthew xv. and Mark vii. for flagrantly violating the fifth
commandment, by allowing the vow of a son, perhaps made in hasty anger,
its full force, when he had sworn that his father should never be the
better for him, or anything he had, and by which an indigent father
might be suffered to starve. There is an express case to this purpose in
the Mishna, in the title of _Vows_. The reader may be amused by the
story:--A man made a vow that his _father should not profit by him_.
This man afterwards made a wedding-feast for his son, and wishes his
father should be present; but he cannot invite him, because he is tied
up by his vow. He invented this expedient:--He makes a gift of the court
in which the feast was to be kept, and of the feast itself, to a third
person in trust, that his father should be invited by that third person,
with the other company whom he at first designed. This third person then
says--If these things you thus have given me are mine, I will dedicate
them to God, and then none of you can be the better for them. The son
replied--I did not give them to you that you should consecrate them.
Then the third man said--Yours was no donation, only you were willing to
eat and drink with your father. Thus, says R. Juda, they dissolved each
other's intentions; and when the case came before the rabbins, they
decreed that a gift which may not be consecrated by the person to whom
it is given is not a gift.

The following extract from the Talmud exhibits a subtile mode of
reasoning, which the Jews adopted when the learned of Rome sought to
persuade them to conform to their idolatry. It forms an entire Mishna,
entitled _Se