8. The second state is when a distinction is made between the things that are the Lord's and those that are man's own. Those which are the Lord's are called in the Word 'remnants', and here they are chiefly the cognitions of faith which a person has learned since he was a small child. These are stored away and do not come out into the open until he reaches this state. Nowadays this state rarely occurs without temptation, misfortune, and sorrow, which lead to the inactivity and so to speak the death of bodily and worldly concerns - the things which are man's own. In this way what belongs to the external man is segregated from what belongs to the internal. Within the internal are the remnants, stored away by the Lord until this time and for this purpose.

7284. 'And Moses was a son of eighty years' means the state and essential nature of the law from God. This is clear from the representation of 'Moses' as the law from God, dealt with in 6771, 6827; and from the meaning of 'eighty years as the state and essential nature of the law from God, that is to say, among those who belonged to the spiritual Church, at the first time of visitation. What is meant specifically by 'eighty' cannot be stated because it entails the entire state and nature of the law from God among them at that time. 'Eighty' can mean a state of temptations, see 1963, and when it does so it entails the same meaning as forty. But because it is also the product of ten multiplied by eight, the meaning of eighty must be sought from these numbers as well. For what is meant by ten, see 576, 1906, 1988, 2284, 3107, 4638; and for what is meant by eight, 2044, 2866. In general all numbers serve to mean spiritual realities, and more particularly the states and essential nature of those realities, see 482, 487, 575, 647, 648, 755, 813, 1963, 1988, 2075, 2252, 3252, 4264, 4495, 4670, 5265, 5191, 5335, 5708, 6175.