ife, and will accuse him in the other. All this is found in
the Talmud.

_Midrasch Tillim_ on Psalm iv, 4: "Stand in awe and sin not." Stand in
awe and be afraid of your lust, and it will not lead you into sin. And
on Psalm xxxvi, 1: "The wicked has said within his own heart, Let not
the fear of God be before me." That is to say that the malignity natural
to man has said that to the wicked.

_Midrasch el Kohelet_: "Better is a poor and wise child than an old and
foolish king who cannot foresee the future."[169] The child is virtue,
and the king is the malignity of man. It is called king because all the
members obey it, and old because it is in the human heart from infancy
to old age, and foolish because it leads man in the way of
[_perdition_], which he does not foresee. The same thing is in _Midrasch
Tillim_.

_Bereschist Rabba_ on Psalm xxxv, 10: "Lord, all my bones shall bless
Thee, which deliverest the poor from the tyrant." And is there a greater
tyrant than the evil leaven? And on Proverbs xxv, 21: "If thine enemy be
hungry, give him bread to eat." That is to say, if the evil leaven
hunger, give him the bread of wisdom of which it is spoken in Proverbs
ix., and if he be thirsty, give him the water of which it is spoken in
Isaiah lv.

_Midrasch Tillim_ says the same thing, and that Scripture in that
passage, speaking of the enemy, means the evil leaven; and that, in
[_giving_] him that bread and that water, we heap coals of fire on his
head.

_Midrasch el Kohelet_ on Ecclesiastes ix, 14: "A great king besieged a
little city." This great king is the evil leaven; the great bulwarks
built against it are temptations; and there has been found a poor wise
man who has delivered it--that is to say, virtue.

And on Psalm xli, 1: "Blessed is he that considereth the poor."

And on Psalm lxxviii, 39: "The spirit passeth away, and cometh not
again"; whence some have erroneously argued against the immortality of
the soul. But the sense is that this spirit is the evil leaven, which
accompanies man till death, and will not return at the resurrection.

And on Psalm ciii the same thing.

And on Psalm xvi.

Principles of Rabbinism: two Messiahs.

447

Will it be said that, as men have declared that righteousness has
departed the earth, they therefore knew of original sin?--_Nemo ante
obitum beatus est_[170]--that is to say, they knew death to be the
beginning of eternal and essential happiness?

448

[_Miton_]