Discourse

Once the edifice of the temple was completed, many of those who had the good fortune to work there finished under a single leader, so as to work without rest on the reformation of their morals and the practice of the most sublime virtues for the edification of their brothers; in a word, to raise within themselves a spiritual edifice. The two objects to which they attached themselves were the love of God and the love of neighbor. They sustained themselves for a long time under the title of Pharisees, which means "separated." They were indeed other men due to their holiness and their boundless charity toward their neighbor. The credit they had acquired among the Jews, who looked upon them with veneration, was the cause of their fall when they seduced them. Little by little, the greater number strayed from the commitment they had made, and hypocrisy alone eventually governed all their actions. However, those who had not been led astray by bad example, and who were faithful observers of the commitments they had contracted and wished to follow them to the letter, separated themselves, chose a Grand Master, and divided themselves into two classes. Some remained in the sequence, others inhabited the Deserts of the Thebaid a region in Egypt known for early Christian hermits, which served as a retreat under the law of grace for the holy anchorites hermits we know by the name of the Fathers of the Desert.

They committed themselves by a solemn oath to observe the law of God, to obey the sovereign, and to exercise boundless charity toward their neighbor. They were named "Saints"; writers have praised them and have never spoken ill of them. These people sustained themselves until the destruction of the temple; this was the reason the greater part embraced Christianity, seeing that there was nothing in their commitments that was not very much in conformity with its precepts.