Letter and spirit of the law by God. Not all Pharisees, nor all Jews of that time, were legalistic. Though modern language has used the word Pharisee in the pejorative to describe someone who is legalistic and rigid, it is not an accurate description of all Pharisees. The argument over the "Spirit of the Law" vs. the "Letter of the Law" was part of early Jewish dialogue as well The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) is one of the New Testament texts to address this theme. The passage concerns a dialogue between Jesus and an "expert in the law" or "lawyer". As described in
Parable of the Tares Instead, Williams believed it was God's duty to judge in the end, not man's. This parable lent further support to Williams' Biblical philosophy of a wall of separation between church and state as described in his 1644 book, "The Bloody Tenent of Persecution". John Milton, in Areopagitica (1644), calling for freedom of speech and condemning Parliament's attempt to license printing, referred to this parable and the Parable of Drawing in the Net both only found in Matthew 13: (I)t is not possible for man to sever the wheat from the tares, the good fish from the other fry; that must