The prominence of Pharisaism in the Gospels—the sustained energy of Our Lord’s denunciation of it, His use of it as a sort of dark background against which to illustrate His own religious teaching, should alone be enough to convince us, since we believe in the divine praeparatio evangelii, that the Pharisees are for all time a supremely important type of religious corruption. Whereas we generally look upon them as a type of such imbecile hypocrisy as could hardly be reproduced, and without a qualm of misgiving we continue to spit upon their gaberdines. One thing that helps us to regard their miserable failings as something quite foreign to us is the false notion we have that their general religious position was essentially Protestant, or rather Puritan, in spirit. The truth is that the Pharisees were more akin to Catholics than to Protestants; and they seem to have been far removed from Puritanism. Their multiplying of religious observances upon which we look with great disapproval was at its best an attempt to carry devotion to the Law, that is to the will of God, into everyday life: and not out of any hatred or suspicion of life but simply in order to sanctify it. For far from being Manichees they were not even passable ascetics. The famous rabbinic saying, “A man will have to give account on the judgment day of every good thing which his eyes saw and he did not eat” probably reflects their general mood. Apart from the New Testament, what evidence there is would seem to show that their religious programme was not regarded as burdensome by the people; rather one would gather that it was welcomed by them, only too gladly accepted as a very satisfying way of fulfilling their duties.