Acts 26:5
Which knew me from the beginning, if they would testify, that after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee. Which knew me from the beginning, if they would testify, that after the most straitest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.
The words are part of Paul's account of his own life and conversion, given before kings and governors as he bore witness to Jesus. Those who had known him from the beginning, his Jewish contemporaries from early in life, were acquainted with his background and could have testified to it had they been willing. What they knew was that he had lived as a Pharisee, after the strictest sect of the Jewish religion. That Pharisaic life was one of rigid, stubborn unbelief until his conversion to faith in Jesus. His zeal and strict observance before accepting the truth finds its parallel in Farel's former devotion to the teaching and practice of Roman Catholicism.