P. 165, l. 15. Somnum suum. Ps. lxxvi. 5. Turbati sunt omnes insipientes corde. Dormierunt somnum suum: et nihil invenerunt omnes viri divitiarum in manibus suis.
P. 165, l. 15. Figura hujus mundi. 1 ad Cor. vii. 31. Et qui utuntur hoc mundo, tanquam non utantur: præterit enim figura hujus mundi.
P. 165, l. 16. Comedes panem tuum. Deut viii. 9. Panem nostrum. Luc. xi. 3.
P. 165, l. 17. Inimici Dei terram lingent. Ps. lxxii 8. The Psalm is of Solomon, Inimici ejus terram lingent.
P. 165, l. 22. cum amaritudinibus. Ex. xii. 8, where the Vulgate has cum lactucis agrestibus.
P. 165, l. 24. Singularis sum ego. Ps. cxli. 10, where the true reading is "singulariter."
P. 165, l. 34. We have no right. The following is the explanation of this and the next two paragraphs: In Is. ix. 6, a prophecy which the Rabbis apply to Messiah, and Christian interpreters to Jesus, are the words: Parvulus enim natus est nobis ... multiplicabatur ejus imperium. In the Hebrew words representing this latter clause, the closed mem, a letter ordinarily employed only at the end of a word, occurs where an open mem should be used. From this orthographic mistake the Rabbis have concluded that Messiah would be born of a virgin, ex virgine clausa. Moreover, as the closed mem in Hebrew writing means six hundred, the Rabbis supposed that Messiah was to come six hundred years after Isaiah. The final tsadé has the same value as the closed mem.
P. 166, l. 8. the way of the philosopher's stone, no doubt the way of finding the philosopher's stone. The dreams of the alchemists on this subject were early mingled with those of the Rabbis on the Messiah. Nor had the Cabbala lost all credit in Pascal's days. In 1629 Robert Fludd, in Latin De Fluctibus, an Englishman, educated at Oxford, and a Fellow of the College of Physicians, published at Frankfort his Medicina Catholica. In this, sect 1. pt. ii. b. 1. ch. i. he speaks of sicknesses and healing as both sent from God by angelic intermediaries, and that all angelic natures are summed up in the great angel Mittatron, whom the Scriptures call Wisdom. In a further passage he says that in him whom the Cabalists call Mittatron others recognise Messiah, and quotes the passage of Isaiah in which occurs the closed mem.
In Reuchlin's book De Arte Cabalistica the open mem is said to represent the sphere of Jupiter, and the closed mem the sphere of Mars.