The Duchess answered, if your Majesty will be pleased to hearken to my advice, I would desire you to let that work alone; for it will be of no advantage either to you, or your people, unless you were of the Jews’ religion; nay, if you were, the vulgar interpretation of the holy Scripture would be more instructive, and more easily believed, than your mystical way of interpreting it; for had it been better and more advantageous for the salvation of the Jews, surely Moses would have saved after-ages that labour by his own explanation, he being not only a wise, but a very honest, zealous and religious man: Wherefore the best way, said she, is to believe with the generality the literal sense of the Scripture, and not to make interpretations everyone according to his own fancy, but to leave that work for the learned, or those that have nothing else to do; Neither do I think, said she, that God will damn those that are ignorant therein, or suffer them to be lost for want of a mystical interpretation of the Scripture. Then, said the Empress, I’ll leave the Scripture, and make a philosophical Cabbala.