It is thus that a religion, in its origin _natural_ and _conformable to reason_, has been abused. A Jew dare not eat or drink, lie with his wife or attend to the wants of nature, without observing an enormous number of laws. With the books on the _slaughter_ of animals alone (the condition of the knife and the examination of the entrails) a whole library could be filled, which certainly would come near to the Alexandrian in extent. And what shall I say of the enormous number of books treating of those laws which are no longer in use, such as the laws of sacrifice, of purification, etc.? The pen falls from my hand, when I remember that I and others like me were obliged to spend in this soul-killing business the best days of our lives when the powers are in their full vigour, and to sit up many a night, to try and bring out some sense where there was none, to exercise our wits in the discovery of contradictions where none were to be found, to display acuteness in removing them where they were obviously to be met, to hunt after a shadow through a long series of arguments, and to build castles in the air.
The abuse of Rabbinism has, as will be seen, a twofold source.
1. The first is an _artificial method_ of expounding the Holy Scriptures, which distinguishes itself from the _natural_ method by the fact, that, while the latter rests on a thorough _knowledge of the language_ and the true _spirit of the legislator_ in view of the circumstances of the time, as these are known from history, the former has been devised rather for the sake of the laws passed to meet existing emergencies. The rabbis look upon the Holy Scriptures, not only as the source of the fundamental laws of Moses, and of those which are deducible from these by a rational method, but also as a vehicle of the laws to be drawn up by themselves according to the wants of the time. The artificial method here, like every other of the same kind, is merely a means of bringing the new laws at least into an _external connection_ with the old, in order that they may thereby find a better introduction among the people, be reduced to principles, divided into classes, and therefore more easily impressed on the memory. No reasonable rabbi will hold, that the laws, which are referred in this way to passages of the Holy Scriptures, render the true sense of these passages; but if questioned on this point, he will reply, "These laws are necessities of the time, and are referred to those passages merely for this reason."