given reasons above for believing that this asceticism was founded on
a false principle, which postulates the malignity of matter and is
wholly inconsistent with the teaching of the Gospel’. But without
pressing this point, of which no absolutely demonstrative proof can be
given, it will be sufficient to call attention to the trenchant contrast
in practice which Essene habits present to the life of Christ. He


who ‘came eating and drinking’ and was denounced in consequence Eating


as ‘a glutton and ἃ wine-bibber ἢ


tainment, and whose last meal was attended with the drinking of
wine and the eating of flesh, could only have excited the pity, if not
the indignation, of these rigid abstainers. And again, attention
should be directed to another kind of abstinence, where the contrast
i all the more speaking, because the matter is so trivial and the
scruple so minute.
‘My head with oil thou didst not
anoint (Luke vii. 46).’

‘Thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy
head (Matt. vi. 17).’


‘And they consider oil a pollution
(κηλῖδα), and though one is smeared
involuntarily, he rubs his body clean
(σμύχεται τὸ σώμα, § 3).
And yet it has been stated that ‘the Saviour of the world......
