had no sight and no knowledge, yet they professed to see and to know; and they had cast out their own consciences, yet would they fain appear able to judge between right and wrong. Thus they presented one appearance to men, which look only on the outside; but another appearance to God, who discerneth the inside; and therefore he called them actors in masks, or hypocrites; he likened them also unto whited sepulchres, hiding death within them. For they hated the Spirit of life, and they lived by rules and precepts which work death; and they would neither enter into life themselves, nor suffer the people of the land to enter in; and they feared and hated prophets and prophecies, and would fain destroy them; and they had hated John the prophet while he lived, and now they hated Jesus, even to the death: and this, while they professed to repent of the persecutions of the prophets by our forefathers, and to build monuments to their memory, saying, "If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets."
After this, he turned round, to go forth for the last time from the temple. But as he came to the steps, he looked back upon all the Pharisees, and upon all their friends (who stood all gathered together behind him, watching him depart), and he pronounced a curse upon them; as though it needs must be that they must yet continue their course; and Satan must accomplish his purpose in them, and must be revealed in all his wickedness working through the Pharisees his bondsmen; and the judgment of the Lord must needs fall upon these servants of Satan: "Fill ye up the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore behold, I send unto you prophets and wise men and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and
