Which knew me from the beginning, if they would testify, that after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.
Ver. 5. After the most straitest sect] There were three several sects among the Jews, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes; which last lived a monastic kind of life, and besides the Bible, studied medicine: whence also they had their name of Asa, to heal. The Pharisees were most in request, professing extraordinary strictness, as those districtissimi Monachi, those puritan monks among the Papists (as one calleth them) that carried wooden crosses at their backs continually, and pretended for it Matthew 10:38 .