The school of the Jews was originally a school of the Law of Moses, who commanded ( Deut. 31:10) that at the end of every seventh year, at the Feast of the Tabernacles, it should be read to all the people, that they might hear and learn it. Therefore the reading of the Law, which was in use after the Captivity, every Sabbath-day, ought to have had no other end but the acquainting of the people with the Commandments which they were to obey, and to expound unto them the writings of the prophets. But it is manifest, by the many reprehensions of them by our Saviour, that they corrupted the text of the Law with their false commentaries and vain traditions; and so little understood the prophets, that they did neither acknowledge Christ, nor the works He did, of which the prophets prophesied. So that by their lectures and disputations in their synagogues, they turned the doctrine of their Law into a fantastical kind of philosophy, concerning the incomprehensible nature of God and of spirits; which they compounded of the vain philosophy and theology of the Grecians, mingled with their own fancies, drawn from the obscurer places of the Scripture, and which might most easily be wrested to their purpose; and from the fabulous traditions of their ancestors.