them from their iniquities, but not from their enemies.

When David foretold that the Messiah would deliver His people from their
enemies, one can believe that in the flesh these would be the Egyptians;
and then I cannot show that the prophecy was fulfilled. But one can well
believe also that the enemies would be their sins; for indeed the
Egyptians were not their enemies, but their sins were so. This word,
enemies, is therefore ambiguous. But if he says elsewhere, as he does,
that He will deliver His people from their sins, as indeed do Isaiah and
others, the ambiguity is removed, and the double meaning of enemies is
reduced to the simple meaning of iniquities. For if he had sins in his
mind, he could well denote them as enemies; but if he thought of
enemies, he could not designate them as iniquities.

Now Moses, David, and Isaiah used the same terms. Who will say then that
they have not the same meaning, and that David's meaning, which is
plainly iniquities when he spoke of enemies, was not the same as [_that
of_] Moses when speaking of enemies?

Daniel (ix) prays for the deliverance of the people from the captivity
of their enemies. But he was thinking of sins, and, to show this, he
says that Gabriel came to tell him that his prayer was heard, and that
there were only seventy weeks to wait, after which the people would be
freed from iniquity, sin would have an end, and the Redeemer, the Holy
of Holies, would bring _eternal_ justice, not legal, but eternal.

SECTION XI

THE PROPHECIES

692

When I see the blindness and the wretchedness of man, when I regard the
whole silent universe, and man without light, left to himself, and, as
it were, lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who has
put him there, what he has come to do, what will become of him at death,
and incapable of all knowledge, I become terrified, like a man who
should be carried in his sleep to a dreadful desert island, and should
awake without knowing where he is, and without means of escape. And
thereupon I wonder how people in a condition so wretched do not fall
into despair. I see other persons around me of a like nature. I ask them
if they are better informed than I am. They tell me that they are not.
And thereupon these wretched and lost beings, having looked around them,
and seen some pleasing objects, have given and attached themselves to
them. For my own part, I have not been able to attach myself to them,
and, cons