15. "YEA, HATH GOD SAID?"

God; omitting the consideration of the arguments derived from final causes. Nature becomes in his system a machine; man, a (material) organism: morality, self-interest: Deity, a fiction."

Such is the religion of the Serpent; who first makes a god of a man's brain, and ultimately a god of his belly; "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Now, we are told that—

"A belief* that the place of punishment is full of serpents, equally pervades the Gothic, the Persian, and the Hindoo mythologies; nor is it easy to say whence this coincidence respecting that particular mode of torture more than any other, could have arisen, except from some universal mutilated tradition that 'the Dragon, that old Serpent, which is the Devil and Satan,' had been cast into the lake of fire and brimstone."

"In a similar manner the Persians supposed the place of torment to be a dark and bottomless pit, full of scorpions and serpents; which gnaw and sting the feet of the damned."

... "The notions of the Hindoos are evidently derived from the same source. In their mythology 'the king of the evil assoors,' or demons, is called the king of serpents; of which poisonous reptiles, folded together in horrible contortions, their hell, or Naraka, is formed."

Something similar to this is to be found in the Apocalypse; where we read of Scorpion-locusts who had a king over them, whose name was Apollyon. They had tails like unto the tails of scorpions, "that is," say Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, Aquinas, and most of the ancient Commentators, "crafty opinions with which they outwardly blandish and

* Faber's Bumpton Lectures, page 103, etc.

D secretly sting." According to this account, the scorpion tail signifies the crafty opinions and subtle fallacies arising from mere sensuous ratiocination, by which the spiritual life of man is injured. Swedenborg regards the sting as signifying subtle falsifications arising from sensuous expositions of the Word, by means of which a stupor is superinduced upon the understanding in regard to spiritual things.

2. "And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden."

3. "But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die."

The trees of the garden were, as we have seen,* those which were nourished by the four rivers, these rivers being of distinct orders, one subordinate to the other; the first, Pison, had reference to the inmost affections of the will, and the trees nourished by this river to the perception of those truths which minister to these affections: the second, Gihon, had reference to the truths of wisdom, and the trees on this river to the perceptions of those truths: the third, Hiddekel, had reference to the truths which minister to the rational faculty, and the trees on this river to the understanding of these truths: the fourth, Euphrates, had reference to the truths which supply the memory, and the trees on this river to the knowledge of these truths. Of all these trees, in their successive orders, man was permitted to eat. The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits. The

* See Tract No. VI., p. 54.

fruits of these trees are the produce of the mind, from these several sources, in their successive gradations; and in their complex constituted the wisdom in general of the Adamic Church.

We come now more particularly to "the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden:" on which subject Swedenborg observes, with respect to the Adamic Church—

"It is to be observed,* that it was never forbidden them to procure for themselves knowledges from heaven concerning good and evil, for thereby their intelligence and wisdom were perfected. Neither was it forbidden to procure to themselves knowledges of good and evil from the world, for thence was the science of their natural man. But it was forbidden to view these knowledges by a posterior way; inasmuch as it was given them to see all things before their eyes in the world by a prior way, and thence to imbibe knowledges. To view the world and all things therein by a prior way, and thence to imbibe knowledges, is to view them from the light of heaven, and thereby to know their quality; wherefore also by knowledges from the world they were enabled to confirm things celestial, and so to corroborate their wisdom. But it was forbidden them to view knowledges from the world by a posterior way; as is the case when conclusions are drawn from them concerning things celestial, and thus in an inverse order, which is called by the learned the order of Physical or Natural Influx, which cannot by any means be effected into things celestial. Such did the men of

* Apocalypse Explained, art. 739.

D 2 the Ancient Church become, when they began to love worldly things above celestial, and to be self-elated, and to glory on account of their wisdom; whence their posterity became sensual, and then their sensual principle, which is understood by the serpent, seduced them; for the sensual principle is not willing to advance by any other than a posterior way."

This therefore is what is signified by the Tree of the science of good and evil in the midst of the garden, of which it was forbidden them to eat.

"That* it was allowable for them to procure for themselves knowledges from the world, and to view them by a prior way, is signified (in Gen. ii. 9) by Jehovah God causing "to grow out of the ground every tree desirable to the sight and good for food;" for by trees are signified knowledges and perceptions; by "desirable to the sight" is signified desirable to the understanding; and by "good for food" is signified what conduces to the nourishment of the mind. The knowledges of good and evil from the Lord, from which wisdom is derived, and the knowledges of good and evil from the world, from which science is derived, were represented by the Tree of lives and by the Tree of science of good and evil in the midst of the garden. That it was allowed them to appropriate to themselves knowledges from whatever source, as well from heaven as from the world, only that they should not proceed in an inverse order, by reasoning from them concerning things celestial instead of thinking from things celestial concerning things worldly, is signified by Jehovah God commanding

* Apocalypse Explained, art. 739.

"MIDST OF THE GARDEN."

them "to eat of every tree of the garden," but not of the tree of the science of good and evil. That otherwise celestial wisdom and the Church would perish with them, is signified by "in the day thou eatest thereof, dying thou shalt die;"—to eat in the spiritual sense, signifying to appropriate to themselves. That the sensual principle seduced them because it is proximately extant to the world, and thence feeleth whatever is pleasurable and delightful from the world, from which it is in fallacies, whilst it is ignorant of and also rejects celestial things, is signified by "the serpent"—the serpent denoting the sensual principle, and no other sensual principle than what was of themselves. The reason why the serpent is the Devil and Satan is, because the sensual principle communicates with Hell, and makes one therewith; for in it resides all the evil of man in the complex. And whereas man from the sensual principle reasons from fallacies, and from the delights of the loves of the world and the body, and this with much readiness and subtlety, therefore the serpent is said to be "more subtle than any wild beast of the field which Jehovah God had made"—the "wild beast of the field," in the spiritual sense, signifying the affection of the natural man."

By "the midst of the garden," then, we have seen to be signified the inmost or centre of the mind, that is to say, the delight of love, the source of its perceptions of Divine Wisdom. When the Tree of science or knowledge is transferred to the midst of the garden, the delight of external science or knowledge has taken the place of the delights of

Wisdom. Hence as science or knowledge is derived from things natural or from an external source, and the life of heavenly love from an internal source, the operations of the mind have become inverted, and sense or science is made the first principle from which is instituted enquiry into things divine. It was this twofold source to which the Apostle referred when he said—"Eye hath not seen, neither hath ear heard, etc., the things which God hath laid up for them that love Him;"—i.e., they do not come into the interior man by the way of the external senses—but God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit—the Spirit of Truth—the order of whose operations is from within to without, not from without to within. In this case the affections of the will, which constitute the inner way and are in the midst of the Garden, are the first to receive the Spirit of Truth; because, in such a state, there is a love of the Truth, and hence a perception of it. It is the pure in heart who shall see God.

This, then, was the order of thought belonging to the Christian Church, in so far as it was Adamic, or as the Apostle calls it, A MAN, A NEW MAN, A PERFECT MAN. This was the primeval order of thought in Paradise: man was instructed not merely through the medium of the senses or external sciences, as in the present day; but through the medium of affections by revelations from God through heaven, by dreams also, and visions; and by means of heavenly affections Truth from heaven was perceived, by which the natural understanding was enlightened even as to natural things; and therefore if, after being in-

" MIDST OF THE GARDEN."

structed by revelations from the Spirit of God concerning the Christian religion, the Apostle had relapsed into the contrary method; and from what the eye had seen, and the ear heard, and the heart unconverted had conceived, had reasoned concerning the things of the Spirit of God, the Apostle would have fallen as did the early Adamic Church; for then, it is certain, that as to all those things which had been revealed to him by the Spirit of God, he would have begun to say, "Yea, hath God said?" So fell the Church of Ephesus from her first love, to which if she did not return, her candlestick was to be removed out of its place. It was as true in the primeval Church as it is now—that as little children we ought not to love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth; for that "hereby we know that we are of the truth."

From these remarks it will be seen, that natural science came to the Adamic Church* more easily than it does now, and was viewed from an à priori principle: that natural reason thus enlightened had intuitions of science which have now ceased, but which resembled those which we commonly call genius; as when we speak of a mathematical genius, a musical genius, an arithmetical genius, a poetical genius, and so forth. For the operations of the mind being then in true order, there were intuitions of reason with regard to science, which resembled the intuitions of instinct. The ends being perceived, the means were perceived. No such long and laboured demonstrations, as now, were then requisite; for "wisdom rained down

* Which was in Asia.

skill and knowledge;"—"she reached from one end to the other, and sweetly did she order all things;"—she was "a Tree of life to them that laid hold upon her."

In the present day, the way to physical science is not à priori but à posteriori; that is, by induction from observation and experiment; and if a man were now to attempt the à priori method, an inverted order of reason would have to determine upon the divine order of Nature. The inductive method, however, which we are now obliged to pursue, and which has led to such great results, is itself a result of the Fall: though it has opened the kingdom of Nature to all enquirers, it has not opened the kingdom of heaven or made believers; nor has it shewn the way to the Tree of life, but only to the Tree of knowledge.

This Tree of knowledge it is, which, in the present day, is in the midst of the garden of the scientific world; and why, it is said, should it not? Is not science God's precious gift, light coming from the Father of lights; and specially coming in greater splendour in this very age in which we live, and given to us by His grace, in order that by means of it we may see more clearly than before his glory and his goodness? Is not science itself God's revelation; and in the light of this revelation do we not see the light of the other? Quo magis rerum naturam cognoscimus, eo magis Deum cognoscimus: vox enim Naturæ vox Dei.—Nay, but consider! If Nature proclaimed in Paradise that the visible Creation was only a type of the invisible; that all things upon earth were copies of things in the heavens; who now hears the divine voice of Nature? Who even is willing to hear? Like the

"MIDST OF THE GARDEN."

voice of God, Nature has more to tell us than we are prepared to listen to. If the present age be the age of science, the age in Paradise was the age of wisdom; and, as such, an age of sublimer love, sublimer thought, and sublimer language than the age of science. Nevertheless modern science is fulfilling a great destiny; for it is not only supplying the loss of those intuitions of natural science which were enjoyed in Paradise, but is also beginning to point to those mysteries which lie hid behind the typical forms of Nature, which it can never of itself explain, but the existence of which it may testify.* These mysteries, as we have said, were indicated by the Tree of life in Paradise, where an instinctive knowledge or science of Nature arose out of the order of thought proceeding from exalted love.

"All† animals as well those which move on the earth, and fly in the air, and swim in the water, are impelled according to their loves; and into their loves flow whatsoever things conduce to their life, viz., to food, to habitation, and to procreation. Hence every kind knows its own aliment, its own dwelling-places, and all that appertains to their conjugal principle, such as how to consociate, build nests, educate the young. Bees also know how to build their cells, to suck honey out of flowers, to build the honeycombs, and to provide against the approach of winter, and even to practise some form of government under a governor, beside other wonderful particulars. All these things are effected by influx into their loves: it is the forms of their affections only which vary the effects of life.

* Tract No. V., p. 35.

† Arcana Celestia, 4776.

D 3

INSTIGATION AND INTERPRETATION.

All the knowledges above mentioned are in their loves. What then would there not be in heavenly love, provided man was in it! Would there not be the all of wisdom and intelligence which is in heaven? For this cause indeed it is, that they who have lived in charity, and no others, are received into heaven; and that in virtue of charity they are in the capacity of receiving and imbibing all truths, that is, all the things of faith." Hence also—

"The* first speech of the parents of the human race could by no means be any other than interior; such as is the sublimer thought of the mind, or such as is that of celestial spirits and angels; namely, the speech which is representative of objects by forms, especially those seen in Paradise and its animal kingdom; in which, from various indications, they perceived their inmost nature, and hence also the spiritual and celestial principle which corresponded to the forms which were effigied. Hence, at the first glance of the eye, they beheld the uses of trees and vegetables, the affections of beasts, the causes of effects, and the ends of causes. These things could not flow into the sphere of their mind, except with a life and a light of life; since they lived according to order à priori, namely, divine order, as spiritual essences endowed with a material body.

"But inasmuch as we, the posterity of Adam, are born and educated into a natural life, we are profoundly ignorant of what this celestial or superior way is: for where there is no love of a thing, there is no knowledge of it."

* From a posthumous work of Swedenborg.

"NOT SURELY DIE."

4. "And the Serpent said unto the Woman, Ye shall not surely die."

On a former occasion we observed, that the expression "God said" indicated the affirmative principle; which is an affection of truth descending from above into the rational mind, arising from a state of latent good in the will, or a love that so it should be: in which case the woman loved and hence perceived that it is not knowledge that gives life, but wisdom: that wisdom is of the will and intellect together: knowledge of the intellect alone. Now, as the woman represents the selfhood of the man as to his affections, which are his real selfhood; when this selfhood is not subordinate to internal reason, but is actuated by its own love of external things, it becomes self-love, and as such is necessarily opposite to the man. And as the man (vir) represented the affirmative state of reason, so the opposite to affirmation is negation, which begins to be now signified by the woman.

Hence the order of thought is, first, the impressions derived from the senses, together with their delights, which are represented by the Serpent: with these things stored up in the memory, the affections of the natural mind (the woman) are in accordance; and when the rational faculty yields to these affections instead of controlling them, it reasons from the things of outward Nature, hence of time and space; in which case, the ideas of the mind, even in the most subtle metaphysical reasoning, are materialistic and even sensuous, in which the life of the intellect is now made to consist. Hence both the rational faculty and the affections of the will now appear to themselves to live; and indeed to live from themselves, and as such not to be in any state of death either in regard to the will or the reason. Such is the negative state of the mind in regard to Divine truth, while yet it appears to itself affirmative, having passed on from a state of doubt to a state of positive affirmation; inasmuch as it is conscious to itself of seeing the truth unobscured by any doubt; although the truth which it sees is directly the opposite of genuine truth.

5. "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as Gods knowing good and evil."

"Your eyes shall be opened:" an expression which, like the terms naked, woman, serpent, wise, has a good sense and a bad sense. In a good sense, it signifies a perception from genuine love that good is good and evil is evil; in a bad sense, perception from perverted love that good is evil and evil is good; the intermediate state being a state of doubt of what is good and what is evil. As motives to the transition from one opposite to the other there are represented things apparently good. For it is a good thing to have one's eyes opened: a good thing to be free from doubt; a good thing to be like God; a good thing to have a knowledge of good that it is good, and of evil that it is evil; and he who has this knowledge has the knowledge proper to his love, and his love is the same with his life, and therefore he is not dead but liveth. This "God doth know," or Divine Truth itself dictates; and all dictates of Divine Truth, i, e., all intuitions arising from this source, are only the Spirit bearing

"BE AS GODS."

witness with our spirit. Hence as the outer sense of touch is the basis of all outer sensations, so the corresponding inner sense, which is that of feeling and hence of affection, is the basis of all inner sensation; and the stronger is self-love, the more assured is self-vision. And what is it to be in the image and likeness of God, but to be as God? And what is it to be as God, but to determine from our own selfhood, our own rational powers, what is good and what is evil, what is true and what is false? Nay, is not this the voice of God speaking within us? And what the voice of God speaks, does it not proceed from God, and is it not Divine? It is thus that, at first, the apparent is the counterfeit of the real; and, finally, the false the counterfeit of the true.

"The case with the people before the Flood," says Swedenborg,* "was this; that at length they were left almost entirely destitute of any remains of good and truth; by reason of their being of such a genius and temper, that they were infected with dreadful and abominable persuasions respecting all things whatsoever which occurred and fell into their thoughts; so that they were not at all willing to recede from them. And this was chiefly owing to self-love, in consequence whereof they supposed themselves to be as Gods, and that whatsoever entered their thoughts was Divine. ... With these antediluvians self-love was prevalent, consequently its lusts; for they so loved themselves that they supposed themselves to be gods; and were so persuaded herein, that they did not acknowledge any God above themselves."

* Arcana Calastia, art. 562, 808.

This was the natural development of the principle, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil;" for this was the especial form of evil which continued to mature itself down to the time of the Flood, and which is referred to in the words—"God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was evil continually."

This form of evil is the one to which mankind is especially prone; for it reappeared after the Flood, in the wish to build the tower of Babel whose top should reach unto heaven. It was seen in the Jewish people, when they wished to rule alone over all the nations of the earth. It was seen among the Assyrians: as where it is said, "Thy wisdom and thy knowledge it hath perverted thee; and thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me." It was seen among the disciples, when they wished to know who should be greatest in the kingdom. It has ever been seen in Christendom, wherever one Church has sought to domineer over another. For in this case the man is Lucifer, the woman is the mother of harlots, and abominations of the earth; the Serpent is the Devil and Satan whose home is the bottomless pit. Even in the present day we may behold the same spirit out of the Church as well as in it. We have only to regard the doctrine of Pantheism as the man, and self-love as the woman; and when they exist simultaneously in one mind, and the doctrine of Pantheism is seen to be good for food, and pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise; presently the Secularist exclaims, that

"GOOD FOR FOOD."

he is Jehovah and that there is no other; the Positivist, that the collective humanity is Jehovah, and that there is no other: that this world, and this world only, is the glorious inheritance of man or of humanity, —that inheritance of which it is said—"All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." How true are the words—"Thou* shalt be mad, for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see."

6. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat."

We have said that the inner verifying faculty is an affection for truth; or a love of the truth that so it should be. But the same words express the verifying faculty of a perverted mind. Love is the test of truth in both cases; but the quality of the truth may be known from the quality of the love; the good quality as in these words,—"Hereby† we know that we are of the truth, if we love one another." The bad by the following,‡—"The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means, and my people love to have it so."—Hence, the first act of the mind is to perceive what is good, and from this good to determine what is true. In the present case, knowledge is thought to be the good, and the transition is from knowledge to wisdom; whereas, in the Paradisiacal state of the Church, it was from wisdom to knowledge, as already observed; wisdom being the guiding

* Deut. xxviii. 34. † 1 John iii. 19. ‡ Jer. v. 31.

and governing principle in the acquisition and exercise of knowledge.

This distinction is observable in the Scriptures, where wisdom stands before knowledge, and not knowledge before wisdom. Hence wisdom is always connected with life, which is not the case always with knowledge.—“He* giveth wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding.”—“I have† taught you statutes and judgments: keep, therefore, and do them; for this is your wisdom and understanding in the sight of the nations which shall hear all these statutes and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.”—“I have‡ filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom and understanding.”—“The fear§ of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy is understanding.”—“Wise|| men lay up knowledge.”—“The lips¶ of the wise disperse knowledge.”—“When the wise** is instructed he receiveth knowledge.”—“I neither†† learned wisdom, nor have the knowledge of the Holy.”—“God‡‡ giveth to a man that is good in His sight, wisdom, and knowledge, and joy.”—“The excellency§§ of knowledge is that wisdom giveth life to them that have it.”—“Thy wisdom|||| and thy knowledge it hath perverted thee.”—Lastly, in the Apocrypha, “The¶¶ fear of the Lord is all wisdom, and in all wisdom is the performance of the law and knowledge of Him.”

* Daniel ii. 21.

§ Eccles. i. 14.

** Proverbs xxi. 11.

§§ Eccles. vii. 12.

† Deut. iv. 6.

|| Proverbs x. 14.

†† Proverbs xxx. 3.

|||| Isaiah xlvii. 10.

‡ Exod. xxxi. 3.

¶ Proverbs xv. 7.

‡‡ Eccles. ii. 26.

¶¶ Eccles. xix. 20.

"GOOD FOR FOOD."

Now we have already observed, that Paradise represents the Adamic Church in a state of wisdom, and hence in a state of knowledge; but there was a state of the Church antecedently to that of Paradise, in which the order of proceeding then was from knowledge to wisdom. This is the order into which we are born in the present day, and it is now legitimate: but not so in Paradise; for if, after arriving at wisdom which cometh from above, it should be abandoned in favor of knowledge coming from beneath or from without, it is evident that, although this knowledge might be a knowledge of truth, it would be an inferior state; as inferior as knowledge to wisdom, as silver to gold. It would be the loss of that life which prevailed in the golden age, and as such would be the death of that life. In like manner the age of brass would be the loss of the life of the silver age; and the age of iron the loss of the life in the age of brass. Hence if wisdom giveth life, the loss of wisdom is the loss of that life, and this loss of life is death,—the death of wisdom in us.

We have thus pointed out the scale of descent of the human mind from wisdom to knowledge, from life to death. We have already shewn, that the life in Paradise consisted in a perception of the correspondence of things on earth with things in heaven; and hence in a state of heavenly wisdom, from which men contemplated the outer objects of nature; whence they had an insight, more or less, into their quality; for "whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air and to every beast of the field." In the place of this inward perception is now substituted external knowledge. The communion with heaven is interrupted, because knowledge from without is obtained from the external world by the rational powers. Thus the silver age might have an external knowledge of the internal wisdom of the golden age, derived from oral tradition; but would no longer have a perception of this wisdom. On the contrary, it might place this wisdom in doubt; as, for instance, in regard to the spiritual meaning of particular objects, it might begin to reason whether this were so; from this state of doubt they might pass on to a state of denial; in which case the garden of Paradise would cease to be a type of heaven, or to declare the glory of God as it did before; its objects would only minister to the delights of science or of sense.

"Thoughts,"* says a modern writer, "ferment long in society before they fully express themselves in form: they first exist as suggestions; then they become doubts; lastly, they pass into disbelief." This law of the human mind, which expresses the change which took place in the age of Louis XIV., is the same with that which is pointed out in the third chapter of Genesis; from which it has descended, through all ages of the world, down to modern times. Thus, in the present day, we have some theological writers who affirm that the wisdom of Paradise consisted in a perception of the correspondence between the things of heaven and the things of earth: some who doubt it: others who deny it. That which

* Parrar's Bampton Lectures, page 234.

"THEIR EYES WERE OPENED."

was at first a source of certainty, has become the most uncertain; and on the ground of its uncertainty has been repudiated altogether; the consequence of which has been, that the Church is left without any principle of Inspiration; and Science and Faith, so far from being in correspondence with each other, have come to be regarded as opposites.

"She gave unto her husband with her, and he did eat," signifying that the masculine reason yielded to self-love, to the inducement to be as God knowing good and evil, hence to the persuasion that the eyes of reason would thus be opened; the real truth being, that while appearing to be opened, they were in reality blinded. For now the external mind predominated over the internal; the ψυχή over the πνεῦμα.

7. "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons."

Here is another change of state. Originally the promise of the Serpent was, Your eyes shall be opened, or, your intellect shall be enlightened. Cornelius a Lapide observes on this passage:—

"The intellect, says Aristotle in his first book of Ethics, is a certain kind of eye; especially as the eye and the sight, more than all the other senses, subserve the intellect for knowledge; for from things seen arises memory, from memory experience, from experiences art or science. And therefore the meaning of the passage is this, You will become of such clear apprehension and sagacious intelligence, that you will seem to yourselves as if you had before been blind."

The same meaning of the terms may be given in the present passage. Hence the whole sentence, apart from the context, may express either side of an antinomy, i. e., opposite meanings, and might thus be regarded as full of equivocations; for the "eyes being opened," the "nakedness," and "sewing together fig leaves," may all be taken either in a good sense, or in a bad sense; and thus the sentence may mean, either that their understanding was enlightened, and hence that they saw that they were in a state of guilt; or else, that their understanding was darkened (being deluded by a false light), and hence that they saw they were in a state of innocence.

These opposite interpretations arise from the opposite states of mind which they serve to express. They are the antinomies of allegorical interpretation, and correspond to those of moral and doctrinal statements; but are no more an evidence of the uncertainty of allegorical interpretation, than they are an evidence of the uncertainty of ethical and doctrinal teaching. For we are told that God is immutable, yet that His purposes may be changed by prayer; that our Lord came to bring peace upon earth, and yet not to bring peace but a sword; that God punishes sin, yet that sin punishes itself.—That God is immutable, is the real truth; that He is mutable, is the apparent truth, arising from the mutability of the medium through which He is beheld, or through which He effects His purposes. That our Lord came to bring peace upon the earth, is the real truth; that He came to bring not peace but a sword, is the apparent truth, arising from the persecutions and temptations through which the Christian has to pass; that God punishes sin, is the apparent truth; that sin punishes itself, is the real truth.

"SEWED FIG LEAVES."

From these considerations we are enabled to see, how, even in the present day, persons may use the language of Scripture to express a meaning opposite to Scripture; and thus seem to be Christians, when yet they are not so. Their eyes are opened in the inverted sense, and they see that they are naked—that is, as they think, innocent. They can also sew fig-leaves together, or devise doctrines, by which is concealed from their own consciousness their real condition before God.

"And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons."

The fig-tree may be taken in a good sense, or it may be taken in a bad sense. "A tree is known by its fruits; a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." Accordingly we read in Jeremiah,* "Then said the Lord unto me, What seest thou, Jeremiah? And I said, Figs: the good figs very good; and the evil very evil, that cannot be eaten, they are so evil." "Behold† I will send upon them the sword, the famine, and the pestilence; and will make them like vile figs, that cannot be eaten, they are so evil." Moreover, we read of the fig-tree which was cursed because it bore no fruit. On the other hand, in numerous places the fig-tree is used in a good sense; Canaan being commended to the Jews as a land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig-trees. "In‡ that day, saith the Lord of hosts, shall ye call every man his neighbor under the vine and under

* Jeremiah xxiv. 3. † Jeremiah xxix. 17.

‡ Zechariah iii. 10.

"SEWED PIG LEAVES."

loins girt about with truth," that they might be clothed, and that the shame of their nakedness might not appear.

But, on this occasion, the girdle was made use of for the purpose of concealment, not only from one another, but also from God. They had fallen into a state of which they were ashamed, and which they endeavoured to extenuate. What was this state; and what the nature of its concealment?

We have already seen how their former state represented the marriage between Christ and the Church. "Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it." Here the mutual love between Christ and his Church is set forth as the essential principle of the love between the husband and the wife; but when the Church forsakes Christ, the wife forsakes the husband—and when, as in the case of Adam and Eve, the husband yields, the marriage between the two is broken, and the love of God and of the neighbor degenerates into the love of self and of the world; whence affections, which before were sanctified, are now changed into lusts—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. It was the consciousness of this change that made Adam and Eve wish to conceal and excuse it, by making the faculty of reason avail itself of external truths for this purpose.

We say external truths; for arguments in extenuation of evil and error need not be falsehoods; they may be genuine truths in their external form; spiritual truths as apprehended by the external man, but hence fallacies. Truths in themselves; but truths so applied as not to convict but to excuse, hence to conceal. Thus we read of the Devil quoting genuine truths from Scripture in the literal sense, serving either for those purposes of temptation to sin, or for excuses after those sin. There are many doctrines in Christendom, in the present day, applied to a similar purpose: those of election and reprobation for instance: "The* Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh;"—"O† Lord, why hast thou made us to err from thy ways, and hardened our heart from thy fear?"—"Therefore‡ hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth." These are apparent truths, by which a person, wrongly disposed, may be led into sin, and may afterwards justify or excuse it; they are fig leaves plucked from a sacred tree, but made use of to conceal nakedness or guilt. So likewise a person may lie, or steal, or covet; and excuse himself on the ground, that it is impossible to keep the commandments of God, to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, for that all our righteousness is as filthy rags: that we need not die unto sin, because Christ died in our stead. Now, it is perfectly true that we cannot attain to Divine perfection, that all our righteousness is as filthy rags, and that Christ died for us; but, in all these cases, these truths are made use of to conceal, excuse, or extenuate sin.

This view of the subject is confirmed by St. Ambrose;§ for, as he says,—

"Whoever transgresses the command of God, becomes

* Exodus vii. 13. † Isaiah lxiii. 17. ‡ Romans ix. 18.

§ De Paradiso Liber Unus.

"VOICE OF THE LORD GOD."

espoiled and denuded of his integrity; and being debased in his own eyes, he wishes to cover himself, as with fig-leaves, with vain or unsubstantial excuses which he sews together into a system of lies; and so one saying following another, he sinner weaves a covering to conceal from himself the convictions of his conscience, and the fact of his crime. For he loses but gird leaves about himself, who, when desiring to conceal his fault, either says it was the Devil who was the author of his sin; or pretends that it was the allurement of the flesh; or puts forward some other beguiler to the evil. Nay, who frequently produces cases from out of the sacred Scriptures, in which he can shew that good men have often fallen into error: pleading, should he be detected in the sin of impurity, that Abraham had a concubine, and David loved the wife of another, and made her his own wife. Thus he 'sews to himself certain fig-leaves,' or precedents, from out of the prophetic Scriptures; thinking that the fruit of a good life will never be required."

Ambrose proceeds to ask whether the Jews did not proceed to sew fig-leaves together to conceal their guilt, when they gave a literal instead of a spiritual interpretation to the law.

It was true that they were the chosen people of God; yet not in the sense they imagined. It was true that God promised the posterity of Abraham, that Canaan should be to them an everlasting possession; yet not in the sense they imagined. In general, it may be said that all apparent truths conceal within them real truths; and hence, that in so far as any Church is in apparent truths alone, so far is real truth concealed from it, and consequently the reality of her own condition. It is the doctrine of Bishop Browne in his work upon Analogy, that we can know only apparent

E truth, and that real truth is not only unknown but incomprehensible; in other words, that we may know the sensuous side of truth but not the rational, the fallacy but not the reality; whence the whole system of analogy, in its doctrinal relations, is used as a covering of fig leaves concealing the real truth. This was peculiarly the case with the Jews, whose ceremonial law hid from them the truths which lay underneath, as also the moral character and condition of the Jewish Church itself. But there was this difference between the primeval Church and the Jewish: the Jewish Church had no conscience; the primeval Church had, and such a conscience as to lead to confession, shewing that there were still remains in it of some principles of good.

8. "And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day; and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden."

"In* the cool (the air or spirit) of the day," an expression which some apply to the morning, some to the evening. If to the morning, as Swedenborg applies it, it signifies the dawn of light, and refers to the enlightenment of conscience, thus to their new state. If to the evening, it refers to the obscuration of the light of conscience, thus to their old state, to which indeed Augustine refers it—

"For," says he, "it was appropriate to visit them at that hour in which they had fallen away from the light of truth. For God, perhaps, formerly spoke to them from within, in

* De Genevi ad literam.

"I WAS AFRAID."

other utterable or unutterable ways; just as he speaks to angels, when he illustrates their minds with his unchangeable truth; in which state, the intellect knows simultaneously what, if uttered in time, is not simultaneous. I say that perhaps he so spoke to them; although not with so full a participation of Divine wisdom on their part as in the case of the angels; still, in however less a degree, it was according to the measure of human capacity, and with the same kind of visitation and speech, possibly, with that which is effected by the instrumentality of the creature, whether in an ecstasy of spirit by means of bodily images, or whether in some appearance presented to the senses of the body (as to the sight or hearing), as when God is seen in his angels, or heard by a voice from a cloud. On the present occasion, however, when they heard the voice of God walking in Paradise in the evening, He was visible only in the person of a creature; lest it should be thought, that the invisible and everywhere integral substance of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit appeared to their bodily senses, having a motion in time and place."

We have before observed, that "the voice of God" was the Divine truth, making itself known to man through some angel or angels speaking in man, as in the case of Zechariah; but addressing the internal reason, and from this the external mind, and descending thence into the sense of hearing, so as often to be perceived as an audible voice, as God speaking to man. The effect produced is to awaken reflection, and cause the internal reason or man to compare its present with its former state, which is now brought to recollection; and the result is, not vain-glory and self-confidence arising from having become as gods, but a sense of shame and fear, arising from a perception of being now in a state of guilt.

E 2

9. "And the Lord God called unto Adam and said unto him, Where art thou?"

10. "And he said I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself."

This question to Adam indicates Adam's question to himself, occasioned by reflection. "As the commandment," says Augustine, "was given to the man through whom it came to the woman, so now it is the man who is first questioned. For the commandment came from the Lord through the man to the woman; the sin from the devil, through the woman to the man." These things, says Augustine, are full of mystical significations.—The mystical significations are simply the two opposite orders of thought; the inner man reasoning from the Divine dictate to the outer man, the ψυχή or woman, and hence to the senses of the body; the inverted order, suggested by the serpent, being from the senses to the ψυχή or woman, and hence to the man or the πνεῦμα. It is in the πνεῦμα or inner man that exists the inner intuition, from which it passes downward to the ψυχή, and the senses. This is the order observed in the narrative, shewing that the true perception of what is good, and hence of what is evil, exists only in this order of thought; and hence it would have been of no use to begin with questioning the woman or the serpent, for without previous intuition from the inner man no question could have originated.

"Where art thou," says Ambrose, "that is, not in what place, but in what state." Before eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they began to

"I WAS NAKED."

question the truth of their former intuitions, and fell into a state of reasoning whether they were trustworthy or not.—"Yea hath God said?" In the present case, the former intuition returns; on which doubt disappears. "I heard thy voice in the garden"—the perceptions of truth, such as were before in the garden, have now returned; but, "We* have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace." Like other words, the term fear, having opposite meanings, gives rise to corresponding antinomies. "Perfecting† holiness in the fear of God;"—"There‡ is no fear in love; perfect love casteth out fear." "I was afraid," may signify therefore a good state, or it may signify a bad one; in the present case, the fear arises from guilt.

As shame was experienced on a former occasion, namely, in reference to perverted affections, so now is fear in reference to the penalty. Both these states manifest the remains of conscience, for "the§ unjust hath no fear of God before his eyes." As a sense of shame had led them to conceal their evil affections, so now fear, to conceal from themselves the consequence—viz., spiritual death. For the trees of the garden signified the various perceptions of truths in their several orders, and these truths are now made use of to conceal instead of to reveal their present condition. How this was effected we have already explained, namely, by converting into fallacies genuine truths.

11. "And he said, Who told thee that thou wast

* Jeremiah xxx. 5. † 1 Cor. vii. 1. ‡ 1 John iv. 18.

§ Psalm xxxvi. 1; Zephaniah iii. 5.

naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?"

Who told thee? for there are now two sources of knowledge; Jehovah God, and the selfhood of the man who is as God. From which of these two sources is derived the perception of his present condition? Is it from the Tree of lives representing the intuitions derived through heaven from Jehovah God; or from the Tree of knowledge of good and evil, representing the intuitions derived from self, and thus also from the woman and serpent? Is not this sense of shame and fear, nay the very consciousness of nakedness itself, awakened by the very voice which now speaks?

We have observed that nakedness signifies opposites, namely, innocence and guilt. It is in the sense of guilt that the man now acknowledges that he is naked, and this acknowledgment arises from reflection upon his state. In a state of innocence the mind does not reflect upon its innocence, any more than in a state of virtue the mind reflects upon its virtuousness. A self-consciousness of this kind would arise from vanity and conceit. There is no voice from heaven to suggest to an innocent mind the idea of its innocence or nakedness; for innocence is of the life, and life is not objective but subjective. So likewise if no voice had come, i. e., no interior perception, to tell the mind that it was naked in the sense of guilty, that nakedness or guilt would have been a habit of which the mind would not have been self-conscious. The idea of nakedness, however, as now suggested to the mind, becomes objective as well

"I WAS NAKED."

as subjective. In the state of innocence its nakedness was unperceived; how is it then that that nakedness comes now to be an object of self-consciousness? Does not innocence itself, when thus converted into an object of self-consciousness, become guilt? Would it not appropriate merit to itself, and lead the man to say, "God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are?"

The man, therefore, now perceives that he is naked in the sense of guilty, and that he could not know this, except from the voice of Jehovah God within him. As nakedness, in the sense of innocency, is not conscious of its nakedness, so it can have no consciousness of the opposite, nay, would believe the opposite to be non-existent or impossible: as in the case of infancy, childhood, or in years of maturity, where the mind regards the evils committed by others as impossible to itself: for to innocency guilt seems an impossibility. In the present case the voice of Jehovah God says, "Hast thou eaten of the Tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?" This tree was in Paradise, and was the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Though planted in Paradise, and obvious to the eye of the mind, there was at first no lust or desire to eat of the Tree: it was afterwards that knowledge is preferred to wisdom; or rather wisdom was made to consist in knowledge.

But how could there be any knowledge of evil in Paradise; and particularly, if, in a state of innocency, good is ignorant of evil, and regards evil as impossible? What is the process by which the evil, which was thought at one time to be non-existent or impossible, comes to be committed? We have said, that it is through the medium of apparent good, apparent truth, and hence apparent innocence: in other words external good, external truth, and external innocence. This was the innocence signified in the words, "they were naked, and were not ashamed." But as external innocence is conversant with good and truth only in their external forms, so these forms are more or less fallacies; and through the medium of these the Serpent exercises his power of temptation over the woman, and the woman over the man. It is through the medium of these fallacies, that the evil, which was thought at first to be impossible, is at length committed; for it is made to assume the appearance of a good.

This was one reason why it was forbidden to eat of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Paradise; for this would have been to pass from real truth and good to apparent truth and good. Apparent truth and good are in their order in the mind, when viewed from real good and truth; therefore apparent good and truth might exist even in Paradise, but then it would be seen to be only apparent; and to substitute it in the place of that which is real, as if it were real, was forbidden by those perceptions of Divine wisdom which were signified by the Tree of life. These are the perceptions which have now returned, and are recognized as proceeding from God.

Hence, that God did command them not to eat of

"THE SERPENT BEGUILED ME."

the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, is the predominant conviction: consequently they no longer doubt that they had transgressed Divine order, and upon this conviction is founded their confession.

12. "And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat."

13. "And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me and I did eat."

Clearly shewing, that they had now come to perceive that their knowledge of good and evil, instead of being genuine had been delusive. They had become as gods, but gods who were filled with shame and fear: gods who wished to hide themselves from God, being ashamed and afraid of their own wisdom. The intuition, having commenced in the inner man, could pass down into the outer; and the outer be enabled to see, that it had acted not in submission to an inner principle but to the outermost; hence that its external affections had not been under the control of truth, but of the senses; and that hence arose a state of perverted love in the will, and falsity in the understanding.

14. "And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life."

As the origin of the true intuition was in the inner mind and thus came from within, so the origin of the false intuition was in the outer mind and came

E 3 from without. The curse, therefore, is first upon the sensuous mind as the origin of the evil.

Cursing is the opposite of blessing: the blessing on the animal creation was—"Be fruitful and multiply:" the curse therefore consisted in being barren and desolate. Hence the voice of God in the conscience, which awoke the sense of shame and fear, so that they wished to avoid contemplation of the consequences of their present condition, now leads them to perceive, that to regard the senses as the first principle from which to will and to think, would cause the Church to be barren and desolate of all genuine knowledge of good and truth, and hence of all genuine knowledge of the real nature of evil and error; that sensuous affections and delights would avert man from the knowledge of God and of himself, more than any other, as being the farthest removed from God, and calculated to place man far below even the animal creation. The way in which this would be effected was obvious. For as, in man's state of innocence, the objects of creation, presented to view by the senses, were regarded only as signs interpreted by the inner mind as having an inner signification; so, when regarded by the senses only, the inner signification would be lost, Paradise would become only a garden of the senses, and man a creature of the senses. In this case, all worship would degenerate into the worship of the objects of sense, thus of the sun, and the moon, and the stars:* professing themselves to be wise they would become fools, and ultimately change the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image

* Romans, first Chapter.

"UPON THY BELLY SHALT THOU GO."

made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things—the very Serpent itself among the number. Nay, further, they would worship not only the creature which God created, but the creature which man created. They would worship gods of silver and gold, of wood and of stone.* "The carpenter would encourage the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, It is ready for the soldering; and he would fasten it with nails that it should not be moved, and then would fall down to it, and worship it, and pray to it, and say, Deliver me, for thou art my God." Thus would man voluntarily degrade himself to the lowest place in creation, regarding every dead and every living thing as above him; and in so doing he would curse himself above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; God giving him over to his own heart's lusts, and to the perversion of every natural affection, with which, as a rational animal, he was endowed.

"Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life."

The belly of the serpent being that which is in contact with the earth, signifies the lowest of earthly delights; as in the case of those whose god is their belly.† The word ἀνθρώπος, in Greek, is compounded of words signifying looking upwards with the countenance, or turning the view upwards. Hence Ovid, having observed that Prometheus formed man in the image of the all-ruling Gods, adds:—

* Isaiah xliv. 12, etc.

† From Parkhurst's Greek Lexicon; art. ἀνθρώπος.

"Prosaque cum spectant animalia cetera terram,

Os Homini sublime dedit: coelumque tueri

Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus."

"'Thus Cicero, in the character of a Stoic, observes, that

God raised men aloft from the ground, and made them upright; that, by viewing the heavens, they might receive the knowledge of the Gods. For men, says he, are upon the earth not merely as inhabitants, but as spectators of things above them in the heavens, the view of which belongs to no other animals.' And again; 'When God made other animals prone to feed on the ground, He made Man alone upright, and raised him to a view of heaven, as of his native and original habitation.' So the historian Agrippa—'The whole human race, as being sprung from the Gods, and destined to return to them, looks upwards.'"

Hence arises the instinctive tendency in the infant to raise itself upon its feet; an instinct which would gradually disappear in proportion as the faculty of reason in the human race became animalized; in which case the arms and hands of man would occasionally be used to serve the purposes of legs and feet.

Indeed, pride of will and intellect itself, tending, as it does, to pervert and ultimately destroy human reason, terminates its downward course only in the merely animal nature; and hence it was that Nebuchadnezzar, "when his heart was lifted up, was driven from the sons of men; and his heart was made like the beasts: and his dwelling was with the wild asses:

they fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven." Dan. v. 21.

There is, however, a lower state than that which is represented by oxen and wild asses; as when it is

" PUT ENMITY."

said,—"Our soul is bowed down to the dust, our belly cleaveth unto the earth;" where the term dust is used to signify that which is utterly dead, and contains within it no aliment, as grass does, for the support of life. Hence also dust is said to be the "serpent's meat;" indicating that the sensuous mind feeds itself upon things which have no life and are incapable of supporting life.

St. Ambrose gives a similar interpretation:*—

"If," says he, "the wisdom of the Devil be represented by the wildest beasts, whose breasts are situated between their feet; and if men, whose wisdom savors of earthly things, and whose minds are not elevated by any interior affection to heaven, seem to creep with their belly on the ground; assuredly we ought not to fill the belly of the soul with the corruptible things of this world, but rather to satiate it with the Word of God. Well, therefore, says David, when speaking in the person of Adam, 'My soul is bowed down to the dust; my belly cleaveth to the ground; for it does so cleave, when, in the fashion of a serpent, it feeds upon the sins of earthly-mindedness.'"

15. "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."

The inclination of the woman had been to the serpent, that is, to the senses; but it is now perceived that the inclination or desire of the woman should be to the man or to the masculine reason, to which, accordingly, the affections signified by the woman were to be subordinated. In this case, their nature would be changed, and instead of being in agreement with

* De Paradiso, liber unus.

sensuous delights, would be opposed to them. The future enmity of the woman to the serpent arises, therefore, from her future subordination to her husband; and the enmity of the serpent to the woman, from the aversion of earthly and sensuous pleasures to affections thus subordinated, which are set upon things above and not upon things of the earth. These affections were to be implanted in the Church or the woman by her Husband, the second Adam. "Behold* I give unto you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and all the power of the enemy." . . . "The carnal† mind is enmity against God." . . . "The God‡ of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly."—By the head of the serpent is meant the first principles from which the sensuous or carnal mind derives its fallacies; hence the primal source of that cunning and subtlety by which it had led the external mind from its affirmative, into a sceptical, and then into a negative state.

"Thou (the serpent) shalt bruise his heel," or the hinder part of the foot. In Scripture different parts of the body are employed to signify different provinces of the mind, and different parts of the Church. Thus we read of the head, the organs of sense, the arms and hands, the heart, lungs, bowels, loins, legs, and feet, which are variously used to signify love, wisdom, power, in their several varieties and relations. In the present case mention is made of the heel as part of the foot, signifying life in its lowest degree. "The heel," says Philo, "is that part of the soul, which adheres to the earthly nature, and which is

* Luke x. 19.

† Rom. viii. 7.

‡ Rom. xvi. 20.

"THE SORROW AND CONCEPTION."

prone to fall into the things of sense and into earthly delights." Consequently, the bruising of the heel, as predicted in the case of our Saviour, were his temptations and sufferings in the lowest degree of the external life; which led to the glorification of his humanity in that particular respect; whence his feet were afterwards seen to be like fine brass as if they burned in a furnace; in contrast to the heel of the foot represented as bruised, or the feet of the image which were made part of iron and part of clay.

Of the sensuous life, therefore, in its enmity to the enlightened reason of the Christian, it is foretold that it would not be permitted to reign over the first principles of the Christian life, but only to wound it in its lowest external forms; while the enlightened reason of the Christian would be enabled to inflict a deadly wound upon the source of the life of the carnal mind; as will be further seen in the next verse.

And here observes Cajetan:—

"Contemplate, Oh judicious reader! these punishments with careful attention; and consider how puerile it would have been to inflict punishments on an irrational animal, such as we call a serpent; and hence be confirmed in a right understanding of this metaphorical discourse, both in this place and others above, where the very text itself not only invites, but compels us to adopt a metaphorical meaning."

16. "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception: in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee."

By conception is meant thought: thus in Daniel,*

* Daniel iv. 5.

"The thoughts upon my bed, and the visions of my head troubled me;" where the term thoughts is in the original conceptions. So in Isaiah, "They* conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity." Hence, as a verb, the same word is used to signify to think. Hence also we commonly speak of concepts, or of conceptions of the mind. "In every operation of the mind," says Dr. Reid,† "in everything we call thought, there must be conception." In popular language it signifies the forming an idea of a thing. "Is there anything more certain," he asks, "than that men may have true or false conceptions, true or false apprehensions of things."

"What is the meaning of the passage," says Augustine, "but this? That that part of the soul which is occupied by carnal delights, whenever it wishes to overcome any evil habit, experiences difficulty and grief; and gives birth to a good habit only by being, with great care and diligence, obedient to reason as to the man; for being taught, as it were, by these very sorrows, it is converted to reason, and is willingly subservient to its commands, lest it should again subside into some evil habit? These things, therefore, which appear to us curses, convey to us precepts, if we would not read spiritual things carnally. For the law is spiritual." De Gen. cont. Man.

In the twelfth Chapter of the Apocalypse we have a further representation of the woman and the serpent. The woman is described as being in travail and pained to be delivered. It is generally granted, that by the woman is here meant the Church; by travailing in birth and being pained to be delivered, the difficulties and sorrows which the Church experi-

* Isaiah lix. 4.

† Intellectual Powers, Essay iv.

"BRING FORTH CHILDREN."

ences in bringing forth sons unto God—the difficulty, for instance, of causing men to love and receive the truth and thus to be born again. Moreover, even after they are born, the serpent, the sensuous and carnal mind, stands ready to corrupt the truth by its subtleties and false persuasions. But having attempted to enter into the mysteries of heaven, and occasioned the fall of many, it is cast down to the earth, and is held ultimately in a state of eternal subjection.

"And thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee"—a prophecy of good; for the desire of the woman had been to the serpent or the senses, whence also the serpent had ruled over the woman. But the time would come when this state would change, and the woman would again be subordinated to the man, or the external affections to the internal reason, which was the order of the mind in Paradise.*

17. "And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, Cursed is the ground for thy sake: in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

* We cannot avoid here noticing the absurd comments of some writers upon this subject, one of whom observes on the words, "he shall rule over thee," that—"At their creation both were formed with equal rights, and the woman had probably as much right to rule as the man; but subjection to the will of her husband is one part of her curse."—It is satisfactory to find that the same Commentator, when he comes to explain Ephesians v. 22, does not regard the subjection of the Church to Christ in this light.

18. "Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth unto thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

19. "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

On this subject Augustine observes;*

"One thing is manifest, that no one can escape this sentence; for this is what every one experiences who is born into this life, namely, a difficulty in discovering the truth, arising from our corruptible body. For as Solomon says, 'The corruptible† body presseth down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things. And hardly do we guess aright at things that are upon earth, and with labor do we find the things which are before us,' etc. These are the very labors and sorrows which are derived to man from the earth. The thorns and thistles are the prickles of tortuous questions, or they are thoughts concerning provision for this life; which, for the most part, unless they are rooted up and cast away from out of the field of God, suffocate the Word so as to prevent its bringing forth fruit in man; even as the Lord says in the Gospel. And since it is of necessity that, when we are instructed concerning the truth, it is through the medium of these eyes and these ears; and it is difficult to resist the phantasies which enter into the soul through the medium of the senses (although through the same medium comes also admonition concerning the truth); therefore, in such a state of perplexity, whose is the face that does not sweat in the eating of his bread? a state which all the days of our life, i. e., of this transitory life, we are doomed to experience.

* De Genesi contra Manichæos.

† Wisdom ix. 15.

"IN THE SWEAT OF THY FACE."

And this is said to him who *tills his ground*; because these things he experiences until he returns to the earth from which he was taken, that is, until the close of this life. For he who *cultivates this ground within himself*, and thus earns his *bread*, although not without labor, is enabled to endure this labor even to the end of his life; after this life, however, suffering of this kind is no longer necessary. On the other hand, he who has not cultivated his ground, and has suffered it to be overgrown with *thorns*, experiences in this life a *curse* upon his earth in all his works; and after this life will endure a fire of purgation, or eternal punishment. Thus can no one evade this sentence. We ought, however, so to act, that the curse may be experienced at least in this life only."

Now it is to be remembered that the curse upon the *man*, is the curse primarily upon the *rational faculty*, which *man* represents; this curse consists in its yielding to an affection for external things, thus in receiving its intuitions from without instead of within; and further, these external things are those derived from the serpent or the senses; and hence the curse upon the rational faculty consists in its reasoning *from* the senses, and not *to* the senses; whence all its operations are inverted. Hence also its life is inverted: inverted life is death, and the death of reason is when it is the creature of the senses. This death is its curse, which the reason then pronounces upon itself. For the reason being formed from out of the senses, and *sensuous things* being represented by *dust*, it is obvious in this case how that which is formed out of dust, returns again to dust; and how the *man*, as representative of *reason*, returns to the *dead* and *sensuous things* out of which he was formed.

And indeed, how can the rational mind pronounce upon itself a more fearful curse than the following?

"Science* has shewn us that we are under the dominion of general laws, and that there is no special Providence. Nature acts with fearful uniformity: stern as fate, absolute as tyranny, merciless as death; too vast to praise, too inexplicable to worship, too inexorable to propitiate; it has no ear for prayer, no heart for sympathy, no arm to save."

"There† is hope of a tree if it be cut down, that it will sprout up again, and that the tender branch will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground, yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth buds like a plant. But man dieth and wasteth away, yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?"—"To him‡ that is joined to all the living, there is hope; for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they shall die, but the dead know not any thing; neither have they any more a reward, for the memory of them is forgotten."—"For that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other: yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast; for all is vanity. All go unto one place: all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again."

Reason having thus sensualized itself, proceeds further to materialize itself; and hence concludes that as itself is matter, so into matter will it be resolved; and hence in its most literal sense, pronounces upon

* See Farrar's Bampton Lectures, page 441.

† Job xiv. 7.

‡ Ecclesiastes ix. 4; iii. 19.

"DUST THOU ART."

itself the curse, "Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return."

Such are the consequences of inverting the order of the human mind, pointed out to man by the voice of God speaking within him; and warning him against those persuasions and subtleties of the serpent, or carnal mind, of which it is written—"To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." It is remarkable that death is not pronounced either upon the woman or upon the serpent, but upon the man; for it was the internal man which was receptive of life from the Tree of life; and the true order was, that the man should give it to the woman. It was the death of this life that is now predicted; and therefore it is that the death is the death of the internal or spiritual man, and hence of the external or natural mind; i.e., of the internal life in the external man.

From these remarks it will be seen, that the narrative does not speak of animal life, but of spiritual life:* thus not of the death of man as an animal, but of man as a living soul. As therefore the death is not the death of animal life, so neither is the resurrection from that death the resurrection unto animal life; nor can it be said that as in Adam all as animals die, or all animals die, so in Christ shall all as animals live, or all animals live. Yet if the Fall of man was the cause of the death of animal life, so should the resurrection of man be the cause of a resurrection of animal life. And the same holds with regard to the vegetable kingdom.

* See the Lecture of Professor Owen upon this subject to the Young Men's Christian Association.

20. "And Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living."

The desire of the woman was to be to the man; in other words, the affections of the mind were to be subordinated to reason, in which case they would bring forth those thoughts and feelings which would have in them internal life. The man therefore perceives how it is, that the external mind is made the source of life or death, according to its obedience or disobedience to the internal mind. According to the present account, the external mind was to be again brought back to a state of obedience to the internal; from which obedience alone through all future ages, spiritual life was to be attainable.

21. "Unto Adam also and his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothed them."

There is a well known remark of Origen upon this subject. "What ought we to think," says he, "that these coats of skins were? For it is exceedingly foolish and imbecile, as well as unworthy of God, to think that God took the skins of slain animals, or of those who had died otherwise, and then by stitching them together as a tailor does, formed them into coats."

The coats of skins, then, were symbolical; for, as all animals were symbolical, so were also the several parts of animals, and hence also the skins. Accordingly we read in Ezekiel—"I* clothed thee also with broidered work, and shod thee with badger's skin, and I girded thee about with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk." So again in Zechariah,† Joshua is

* Chap. xvi. 10.

† Chap. iii. 3.

"COATS OF SKINS."

represented as standing before the angel of the Lord in filthy garments, and the angel says to him, "Behold I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment." So in the Psalms—"The* king's daughter is all glorious within; her clothing is of wrought gold. She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework." So in the Apocalypse—"He† that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment."—On the other hand, our Lord warns us to beware of false prophets that come in sheep's clothing. No one imagines that these and other passages are to be understood literally. The coats of skins indicate that man in his external life, had now descended much more nearly to the animal nature; and if we conceive the skins to be of clean animals, it would signify, that man was now in a state of external good, covering over or concealing from himself both his former state of innocency, and of guilt. These skins of animals were, in the future history of the Church, to be exchanged for the beautiful garments of Jerusalem.

22. "And the Lord God said, Behold the man is become as one of us to know good and evil; and now lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live for ever,"

23. "Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken."

The man had become, in his own estimation, as Elohim, or as one of the Elohim; i.e., he was in a

* Psalm xlv. 13.

† Chap. iii. 5.

state of self-love and self-intelligence; and now, there is exercised a Divine precaution, lest in this state he "put forth his hand." It is well known that the hand signifies power and ability; in the present case power and ability derived from self. Thus, "Uzzah* put forth his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, and God smote him there for his error, and there he died by the ark of God." So again—"The† rod of the wicked shall not rest upon the lot of the righteous, lest the righteous put forth their hands unto iniquity." In a good sense we read—"The† Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth." To put forth the hand therefore, is to act from self-derived ability and power; in the present case, to think from one's own ability and power, in consequence of becoming as Elohim, and thence knowing good and evil.

To "eat of the tree" is to partake of that inward perception which belongs to the internal reason. If this internal perception were now regained, the man would be inwardly an angel and outwardly a serpent; inwardly heaven, and outwardly hell. Hence would arise in his mind a tremendous conflict between good and evil; and man would suffer far more than the torments of the damned.

23. "Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken."

These inmost perceptions of the mind, in virtue of which man held converse with angels, are now therefore taken away; and man is henceforth required to

* 2 Samuel vi. 6.

† Psalm cxxv. 3.

‡ Jeremiah i. 9.

"CHERUBIM."

cultivate the external mind, from out of which he had been elevated into the intuitions of heavenly wisdom, but which was now perverted by the senses.

24. "So he drove out the man, and placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the tree of life."

The east of the garden of Eden is the sunrise of heat and light, or of love and wisdom, in the mind. "Eastward in Eden" is where the garden was planted, and instead of the Tree of life being now visible there was perceived instead a "flaming sword." These expressions were the representative forms of thought in those days; for all thinking was then performed by symbols. Hence Cherubim and a flaming sword, might as naturally have been representative forms presented to the spiritual eyes of men at this period, as they afterwards were to John in the Revelations when his eyes had been opened. Still these outer forms had an inner meaning.

It is very evident that the nature and tendency of the human will had now changed; and in fine, into the external affections of self-love and love of the world. If, therefore, man in his own estimation had become as a God, and so became wise and intelligent from his own power; and if at the same time he were to derive perceptions from the Tree of Life, pointing out to him that these were all evil, he would only be in a state of perpetual fear, terror, and self-condemnation; and therefore on this account also, it was in mercy to man that these higher perceptions were withheld; for "it was better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than after they have known it to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them;" and therefore although the loss of the Tree of life was in one sense a curse, it was in another sense a blessing.

We have seen how the Divine Providence of the Lord may be mercifully exercised in preventing man from attaining to higher perceptions of good than he is willing to obey. We now come to explain in what that Divine Providence consists. The Lord acts through the medium of heavenly agents: in the present case these agents are denominated Cherubim, and their office is to keep the way of the Tree of life. The Cherubim, therefore, are those orders of angels through whose medium man had at first received his angelic perceptions from the Tree of life or of Divine wisdom. In place of the Cherubim another medium is substituted by man, who now thinks from without instead of from within; and, as such, that his own self-hood is as one of the Elohim, or as one of the Cherubim; for these Cherubim, as representative forms, were representative of Elohim. "He* maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire." This flame of fire is the flame of Divine Love, from which the heavenly hosts, who had been in communication with man, were in their heavenly wisdom, or that of the Living Word. Now we read in the Apocalypse† that out of the month of the Lord proceeded "a two-edged sword to smite them that held the doctrine of Balaam;" evidently signifying the combat of the true against the false; we read also

* Psalm civ. 4. † Chap. ii. 12, etc.

"FLAMING SWORD."

that "out* of the mouth of the Word of God goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations," nay, that the sword of the Spirit is itself the Word of God. This flaming sword therefore represents Divine Truth as in a state of opposition to human error; shewing that man could not now enter into heaven, except at the risk of being pierced through by the flaming sword of this Divine Truth, even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow; the Word of God being a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. There is now, therefore, a disruption, more or less, between heaven and earth, down to the time when the Babylonian pride of man is finally destroyed, and man perceives the truth that the Lord alone is Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the Ending, the First and the Last; and that blessed are they that do His commandments, from obedience to which, and not from man's own self-hood, is derived the power to partake again of the Tree of life.

If now truth be represented by a sword, and apparent truth be contradictory to real truth, we have here sword against sword; the sword of man against the sword of the Cherubim. Here we have the key to the antinomies of Scripture; the apprehensions of truth in the external man being opposed to the perceptions of truth in the internal man, real truths being not perceptible but by the internal reason. Therefore, a merely external Church must be at war with internal truth; and further, in so far as external truth is derived from the self-hood of man, it will be

* Rev. xix. 15.

P 2 at war with itself. Thus even within the Church, nation will fight against nation and kingdom against kingdom. The flame will be that of the odium theologicum, and the sword will be that either of truth without love, or of theology without truth, i. e., the flaming sword of uncharitable or false doctrine, or both: as when we read of the going forth of the red horse,* and "power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another, and there was given to him a great sword."

In conclusion: It has been said that the restoration of man from the ruins of the Fall, is the grand and ultimate object of the Patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian dispensations. There is, however, this difference between the Adamic and the Christian dispensation: that in the Adamic, Jehovah was the invisible God, and was made visible to man only through the medium of some angel, according to the nature of the revelation for the time being. Under the Christian dispensation, Jehovah becomes permanently visible in His own Divine manhood, which is the image of the invisible God in a fuller sense than any angel could be. Therefore the final dispensation, in which there are new heavens and a new earth, in the sense we have before explained,† renders possible a fuller revelation and consequently a fuller union of the Church with Christ than that which took place under the Adamic dispensation: for, "unto which of the angels said He at any time—Let all the angels of God worship Him." The final dispensation, then,

* Rev. vi. 4.

† Tract, No. VI., p. 6.

renders possible a fuller knowledge of God than the Adamic. To what extent the Church upon this earth may avail itself of this possibility, is a question into which we do not enter; but certainly the advancement in the sciences is not without a Divine meaning in regard to the Church. At the same time we observe, that whether modern Science shall prepare the way of the Lord, or whether it shall effectually close it up, depends entirely upon the use which shall be made of it. If it be regarded as the first principle of intellectual life, it will lead the Church to regard as mysticism everything beyond materialism; and as such not only to repudiate but even to nauseate all that is spiritual. But if the first principle of life be regarded as being only in that wisdom which cometh from above, and which results from eating of that Tree of life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God, then will knowledge be subordinated to wisdom, the external man to the internal, and the internal to the Lord himself, who is God over all, blessed for ever.

We have now completed the present series of Tracts on Inspiration and Interpretation. We have defined the meaning of the term Inspiration, and shewn that the Inspiration of Scripture consists in its internal sense; and we have practically applied this principle to the Interpretation of the first three chapters of Genesis, so as to give an example of what that internal sense is. In so doing, we have demonstrated, in opposition to that modern criticism which would destroy their Divine authority, that these chapters are Divinely inspired. It remains to be seen whether the Church will receive or reject this evidence in proof that this part of the Scriptures is a genuine part of the revealed Word of God; my own conviction being, that there will be no peace for the Church until it returns to the spiritual interpretation of Scripture—an interpretation founded not upon fancy and imagination, but upon a diligent and devotional study of the relation between earthly and heavenly things, or between the Church upon earth and the Church in heaven; the genuine Church upon earth being no other than that which descends from God out of heaven.

We close the present Tract with a few observations upon the "Preface to the Third Edition" of Dr. Lee's work on The Inspiration of Holy Scripture; and this we do with the view of illustrating a most important subject to which Dr. Lee calls attention.

The Archdeacon remarks, that the parallel between the Divine and human natures of our Lord, and the Divine and human elements of Scripture, so generally adopted by theologians of the Church of England, and attributed to Adolphe Monod, may really be traced to Emanuel Swedenborg, and is the doctrine he pre-eminently held. This indeed is true; but when Dr. Lee traces the doctrine to a remoter source, viz., to the Select Discourses of J. Smith of Cambridge, and in this case quotes the original passage faithfully from this author, it is to be regretted that, in the case of Swedenborg, he does not quote from the author, nor even from the Tract he alludes to,*

* No. II. of this Series, page 25.

but from Dörner; and thus he presents us not with the genuine doctrine of Swedenborg, but with the doctrine such as it is after passing through the transmuting processes of Dr. Dörner's mind. Dörner's statement in regard to Swedenborg's doctrine of the Incarnation is simply misrepresentation.

The doctrine of Swedenborg is, that by generation from the Father, the Lord inherited a Divine nature and was inmostly Jehovah; by conception from the mother, he inherited the nature of the mother, and through the mother all the states of the Church from the time of Adam. These states were the plane, in the maternal humanity, of those temptations which he finally overcame; thus perfectly uniting the humanity with the Divinity, so as to possess a glorified or Divine humanity.

Dr. Lee says,* that the doctrine of Swedenborg concerning the Incarnation is in close contact with the modern heresy of Mr. Irving; according to whom . . . . "It was not human nature unfallen, and pure as it came out of the hands of God, which Christ took upon him; but that nature stained and depraved by sin, which is inherited, to use the language of the Ninth Article, by every man that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam."—Now I am here concerned with this doctrine only as it was held by Swedenborg, from whose writings probably the idea was in this case originally taken. What then is here meant by—"naturally is engendered?" Is it intended to exclude the humanity assumed from Mary?

* Page 18.

Let us turn to the Second Article, where it is said, that the Son which is the Word of the Father "took man's nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin." What was this nature? Was it the nature which Adam possessed before the Fall? What says the Scripture? "In thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed." In whose seed? In the seed of Abraham. Who are the seed of Abraham, but the children of Abraham? And were the children of Abraham unfallen? St. Bernard* especially guards us against the doctrine which Dr. Lee is maintaining, in opposition to what he calls a modern heresy. St. Bernard says:—"In quo enim magis commendare poterat benignitatem suam, quam suscipendo carnem meam?—Meam, inquam, non carnem Adam, id est, non talem ille habuit ante culpam."

Now I have no desire to impose a meaning of my own upon this passage: I am ready, as a reader of Swedenborg, to abide by the general explanation given by the present Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Samuel Wilberforce:†—

... "To be truly tempted," says he, "Christ must be truly man. Unless His temptations, His sufferings and His death, were all wrought in appearance only, there must be that nature truly in Him which is capable of these accidents. And this, in its fullest signification, is the doctrine of the Catholic Church. That Christ truly did take our nature to Himself, of the very natural substance of his virgin-mother, with a body truly and really derived from hers; and as a body, so also the higher parts of our mixed nature,—a mind

* See his Works, vol. i., col. 796, sermon i., on The Epiphany.

† Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford in St. Mary's Church, p. 144, etc.

and will dwelling in a reasonable soul. And to the full perception of this truth it must be noted, that the nature He took was the human nature as it was in His mother; not, as some have fancied, the nature of Adam before his fall; for how should he have obtained that nature from the Virgin Mary, who herself possessed it not? and if He had, how could He have been in all points like as we are, sin only excepted? for we know not that in Adam's body were all those sinless infirmities which dwell in ours, and which indeed we acknowledge in our Lord's."

"And herein was shewed his marvellous love 'in taking,' as St, Bernard saith, 'my flesh upon Him, my very flesh, not that which Adam had before his fault.'" The contrary opinion has arisen from the pious but mistaken fear, lest in allowing that Christ took the very nature of His mother, we should unawares allow that He took what was sinful; but the true answer to this apprehension is, that the Eternal Son took to Himself, in the womb of the Virgin, not a human person but humanity,—humanity, which, if it had been impersonated in one of us would have been sinful, but which could not be sinful until it was a person, and was never a person till it was in the Christ."

According to this account, the doctrine taught by Swedenborg is the real Catholic doctrine, and as such, the genuine doctrine of the Church of England, as taught in the Second Article: whatever defection from it may have since taken place.

The defection, however, is not universal. Dörner* himself testifies that while all agree that the humanity of Christ was sinless, modern theology is as yet unsettled with regard to the nature of the humanity assumed in the womb of the Virgin:

* On the Person of Christ, Division ii., vol. iii., p. 230.

F 3

"Unanimous as is the theology of the present time in regard to the sinlessness of Jesus; predominant as is the number of those who keep firm hold on the truth of his moral development; they are not unanimous as to whether the temptation and conflicts of Christ do not require that He should have attained to ethical perfection through choice and free decision; or whether, after a more physical manner, we ought not to predicate of Him an immediate impossibility of sinning. The answer to this question depends partly on the clearness and determinateness of our knowledge of the relation between the physical and ethical in general; and partly on the other question, whether the personal unity of the Logos and of the humanity of Jesus is to be deemed a thing once for all completed by the act of incarnation, or a thing still subjected to growth, on the basis of a Unio, that, whilst growing, had a veritable existence."

Let us now apply the doctrine of the Incarnation as held by St. Bernard, Swedenborg, and the present Bishop of Oxford, to that of the Divine Inspiration of the Scriptures.

Dr. Lee maintains, that as Inspiration or the Divine influence exerted in the composition of Scripture, is the peculiar and distinctive work of the Holy Spirit,—of the Third, not the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, so this consideration alone sets aside Swedenborg's notion that the Bible is a second mode of the Incarnation,—unless indeed on the Sabellian hypothesis to which, as he assumes, Swedenborg was notoriously inclined. "At the utmost, therefore," says he, p. 12, "we should be justified were we to say in the way of vague comparison, that the Holy Ghost is manifest in the Old and New Testaments as the Eternal Word was manifest in the flesh." Now I ask, what are the Old and New Testaments, but A BODY?—Nay: but would not this be to make the Holy Ghost incarnate and not the Word?—Let us see: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that Holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." Was then the body which was born of Mary an incarnation or manifestation of the Holy Ghost? Or rather, is not the Holy Ghost represented as preparing a body for Him in whom should dwell the Power of the Highest? And, was not the Holy Ghost operative in preparing a body for Divine Truth, when influencing the writers of Scripture to form a written body for an indwelling Divine Spirit? And what is the Holy Spirit but the Spirit of Truth? And what is the Spirit of Truth but the Spirit of Him who is the Truth? And who is the Truth but the Lord Jesus Christ? Well then, the Spirit of Truth proceeds from the Living Word in whom is the Father, to influence the minds of the sacred writers to produce a written body of Truth which shall be the Living Word incorporate, or made manifest in the written Word. In what better way can any one be helped out of his perplexity, who thinks that if the Inspiration of Holy Scripture be the peculiar and distinctive work of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Scriptures be a body, it must necessarily be the body of only the Third Person of the Trinity?

As Dr. Lee, however, though admitting the parallel between the Living and the written Word in a vague and general sense, does not admit it in a clear and definite sense, I may be allowed to illustrate the subject by entering more into particulars.

And, first of all, let us take the statement of the Select Discourses;*

"Divine Truth hath its humiliation and evinacation, as well as its exaltation. Divine Truth becomes many times in Scripture incarnate, debasing itself to assume our rude conceptions, that so it might converse more freely with us, and infuse its own Divinity into us. God having been pleased herein to manifest Himself not more jealous of his own glory than He is, as I may say, zealous of our good. Nos non habemus aures sicut Deus habet linguam. If he should speak in the language of Eternity, who can understand Him, or interpret His meaning? Or if He should have declared His truth to us only in the way of the purest abstraction, that human souls are capable of, how should then the more rude and illiterate sort of men have been able to apprehend it? Truth is content, when it comes into the world, to wear our mantles, to learn our language, to conform itself as it were to our dress and fashions; it affects not that state or fastus which the disdainful rhetorician sets out his style withal, non Tarentinis aut Siculis hæc scribimus; but it speaks with the most idiotical sort of men in the most idiotical way, and becomes all things to all men, as every son of Truth should do for their good. Which was well observed in that old Cabbalistical axiom among the Jews, Lumen supernum nunquam descendit sine indumento."

Such is the statement in which, according to Dr. Lee, we may find the first traces of Swedenborg's doctrine concerning the parallel between the Living and the Written Word. From the Cabbalists the

* Of Prophecy, chap. i.

principle was imported into the Christian Church, and was advocated in many of the Patristical writings; where traces of it may be found long before the time of the Select Discourses.

For as a garment is the clothing of the body, and the body is the clothing of the soul; so the literal sense of Scripture was from early times regarded as a body, and the spiritual sense as a soul; and thus contemplated, the literal sense is the embodiment or incarnation of the spiritual. Hence observes an ancient writer:* "The body of Christ may signify the Sacred Scriptures, in which He is contained as the soul in the body." Again another ancient writer,† "By the words—body of Christ—we may understand the Sacred Scriptures and the doctrine of Christ." Also another ancient writer,‡ "The historical letter of the Sacred Scriptures, both Old and New, is a body, but the meaning and aim of the things which are written, is the soul." This author further observes that the body and soul here referred to, must be regarded as those of A MAN.

Let us see the application of this principle to the question at issue.

The Word of God contains the thoughts of God; hence the Word of God incarnate is the thought of God incarnate. Professor Max Müller had said in his Lectures on the Science of Language,§ "the

* Isychius: see Lauretus, art. Corpus.

† Paschasius: see Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum, tom. ix., p. 125.

‡ Maximus (Monachus), Ibid., tom. vii., p. 414, where this writer is somewhat diffuse upon the subject.

§ See No. V. of this Series of Tracts, p. 82.

word is the thought incarnate." If so, there is obviously an analogy between the two cases, the word in both being "thought incarnate." I do not see that Dr. Lee has either disproved or denied this fact;* and as to any misuse of it which may have been made by others, this does not in the least invalidate the fact itself, nor is Swedenborg responsible for it. The word is the embodiment of the thought; hence the relation of the thought to the word is the relation of the soul to the body; and as the soul is incarnate in the body, so is the thought incarnate in the word. It was upon this principle that the Cabbalistic expositions of the Jews are known to have been founded. The Jews were, from the time probably of Moses, in possession of a true principle; but their foolish heart did not know how to apply it.

It is stated by Allen, in his Modern Judaism,† that

"Menasseh Ben Israel, who flourished about the middle of the seventeenth century, and whom the present chief Rabbi of the Portuguese Jews in London extols as a Divine philosopher, endowed with profound learning and extreme piety, compares the Law to the body, the Mishna to the soul, and the Cabbala to the soul of the soul."

This relation of the letter to the spirit was a traditional philosophical principle in the old Cabbalistic school of the Jews; and whatever may be thought of the principle itself, it evidently supplied

* See Dr. Lee's Work, p. 503, 528.

† Page 72. In this passage, body, soul, and soul of soul, are expressions used to signify the exterior, interior, and inmost; corresponding to Origen's doctrine of body, soul, and spirit.

them with a definite idea of the nature of Inspiration. Now the relation of the Divine to the human element is the relation of the soul to the body; "for as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ." The parallel is not, as some have thought, between the human nature of the Living Word and the human nature of the writers of the written Word; but between the human nature of the Living Word and the literal sense of the writing, or of the written Word itself. For as the Humanity of our Lord is a body to the Divinity, so the literal sense of the writing is a body to the spiritual sense, and records the states of the Church. This principle of Divine Inspiration discovers to us a definite method of interpretation, which, so far from losing itself in vague generalities, leads, as we shall now see, to very serious consequences to the Church itself; for it gives us the key to certain ominous expressions in the Apocalypse.

Origen, who was one of those who regarded the literal sense of Scripture as the body, and the spiritual sense as the soul, thus writes:—

"I am of opinion, that like as Christ came hidden in a body, so that by carnal minds who looked only on the outward appearance of his body, not considering the virtues with which it was endowed,—he was seen only as man; while by spiritual minds who did not attend to the outward appearance of the body, but considered the works which were performed by those virtues, he was perceived to be God: so likewise all divine Scripture is invested with a body (incorporata), but especially that of the Old Testament. For a spiritual and prophetic sense of Scripture lies hid in the history of the fact set before us: so that by persons of humble intelligence all Scripture may be understood according to the history, but by the spiritual and the perfect, according to the spiritual mystery."

Now the word above used is incorporata, i. e., embodied or invested with a body: the word used by me was incarnate: and incarnation is commonly defined to be the act of assuming a body. Well then: Is this a Catholic doctrine, or is it not? for, in the words of Dr. Lee, "This same idea is the foundation of the doctrine as to Holy Writ taught by Emanuel Swedenborg." Nay: but says Dr. Lee, "the doctrine is admissible so long as it remains a vague generality."—Did Origen let it remain "a vague generality?" Did Swedenborg? "He that hath ears to hear let him hear."

First, let us take the case of Origen: He is commenting upon the passage in Matthew xxiii. 27, 33. "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees," etc., etc.

"As in the case of the prophets themselves who had departed from this life, their souls and spirits were in the land of the living; so also it is to be observed, that in the prophetic writings, the narrative, in respect to the simple history, is the body; but the spiritual sense itself, and the inmost truth of the Scriptures, are the soul and the spirit which dwell in the narratives, which narratives are very simple in respect of the history. 'The sepulchres of the prophets' we may not inaptly regard as the very letter of Scripture, and the books in which the narrative is permanently located: in like manner as the body is deposited in sepulchres. They, therefore, who understand and receive the spiritual things of the Scriptures, and their truth which is inmostly concealed, have within themselves the souls and spirits of the prophets, being themselves made, as it were, into a place for living prophets. But they who do not understand these spiritual things, nor seek them out, but attend only to the simple narrative and mere history of the fact, pay respect only to the bodies of the prophets which are located in the letter, and in books as it were in sepulchres. Of this character were the Pharisees who were rightly called Pharisees, i. e., cut off; for they have cut off from the body of the history the spiritual truths of the prophets, expelling as it were the soul of the prophets from the body, and thus slaying the prophecies themselves, and making them lifeless as having nothing spiritual in them. And such are veritable hypocrites, building and adorning only the sepulchres of the prophets containing the corporeal history; for they build and adorn when they study the writings and books of the prophets. And these persons being without understanding, inasmuch as they are bestowing attention only on dead bodies, i. e., mere historical narratives, have all the appearance of being piously employed in cultivating the memory of the prophets; but they are impious. They wish indeed to protest that they are not the associates of those who killed the prophets; while yet they add to the crimes of those who had killed them, and fill up the measure of their iniquity, by being convicted of this very fact, that after all they do not believe in Christ, whom not the mere outward history of the prophets, but their spiritual meaning makes known."

What a comment is this upon events which are taking place in these last days of the Church!

Now we are told that all the prophets are comprehended in the Two Prophets which are spoken of in the Apocalypse, and are called The Two Witnesses which prophesy: for instance; Dr. Wordsworth observes, that the history of these Two Witnesses is the history of Holy Scripture: and that in the Vision of these Two Witnesses* is predicted the ignominious treatment which the Word of God would receive from an ungrateful world. This Word of God he regards, with several other Commentators, as the Two Testaments, and thus as the written Word.

"As† it was with Christ so with His Word. It is despised and rejected by many; by prophets, princes, priests, and people. Christ was crucified on the sixth day of the week; and the Sixth Seal and the Sixth Trumpet,—that is, the last age—the eve of the everlasting Sabbath,—is marked in the Apocalypse as a time of rebuke and blasphemy against His holy Word. Its foes will exult over it as dead. But the Spirit of God is in it; it rises and stands erect."

"Observe‡ this expression,—their dead body. He does not here say bodies, but body. How is this? The Two Witnesses have but one body. The reason is clear. The Two Testaments are one; they are written by the same Hand: they are the words of the same Spirit."

Here the dead body of the Two Witnesses is said to represent that of the written Word. And as the Spirit of God enters afterwards into the dead body of these Witnesses, so it enters into the dead body of the written Word. The dead body is the letter: it is the Spirit which giveth life.§

Is it true then, or is it untrue, that they who would deny to the Scriptures the relation of soul and body, destroy both soul and body together? May

* Exposition of the Apocalypse, p. 243. † Ibid., p. 250.

‡ Ibid., p. 246.

§ See the Third Volume of my Spiritual Exposition of the Apocalypse, Chap. xi., where this subject is treated more at large.

we not affirm with Dr. Wordsworth,*—"Scripture and the Church must suffer together. It is not possible to injure the one without injuring the other. They have one and the same Lord; one and the same cause; one and the same career: and as their sufferings coincide, so also will their victory."

But further: Dr. Wordsworth observes, that the numbers in the Apocalypse† present to us certain parallelisms,—

"They shew that the sufferings of Scripture coincide with those of the Church, and with the empire of the Beast. . . . The Written Word has been treated in the same manner as the Incarnate Word. The Herods and Pilates of earth have conspired against it; and it has been set at nought by the Scribes and Pharisees of the Great City." . . . "And let no one be staggered or astonished, if it should be his lot to see other more outrageous insults heaped on the Word of God. We see its present sufferings; and so one part of the prophecy is shewn to be true: and let us remember St. John predicts, that as it suffers with Christ so will it rise again, and ascend, and reign with Him. Therefore let us not be offended or dismayed by its treatment on earth; but let us raise our eyes and contemplate its glory in heaven. Above all let us take heed to ourselves: let us fear the Word: let us believe the Word: let us obey the Word, or the Word will be our woe."

As the written Word is paralleled, in its sufferings, with the Living Word, so the violence offered to the Living Word points to violence offered to the written Word. Thus in the Catena Aurea of Aquinas

* Exposition of the Apocalypse, p. 254.

† Pages 270, 288.

it is said, that*—"they smite the head of Christ with a reed who speak against His Divinity, and endeavor to maintain their error by the authority of Holy Scripture, which is written by a reed"—rather, we should say, "which they converted into a reed," i.e., by false interpretations. Hence Swedenborg observes, that—"All things which are related concerning the Lord's passion, signify the mockery of Divine Truth, consequently the falsification and adulteration of the Word; inasmuch as the Lord, when he was in the world, was Divine Truth itself, which in the Church is the Word; and because the Lord was that Divine Truth in the world, He permitted the Jews to treat himself as they treated the Divine Truth or the Word, by its falsification and adulteration."

Now this parallel between the Living and Written Word supplies us with a principle of Inspiration which is an antidote to the following observation of Locke, and which is the foundation of modern Criticism. Referring to the Old and New Testament, he observes,†—

"Nor is it to be wondered that the will of God, when clothed in words, should be liable to that doubt and uncertainty which unavoidably attends that sort of conveyance; when even his Son, whilst clothed in the flesh, was subjected to all the frailties and inconveniences of human nature, sin excepted."

Doubt and uncertainty may pertain to uninspired language employed by men, but not to the language of which it is said—"the words that I speak unto

* Apocalypse Explained, art. 627.

† Essay on the Human Understanding, book iii., chap. ix., § 23.

you they are spirit and they are life." The genuine Word of God is a Word which conveys the thoughts of God; and this Word, so far from being represented in the Scriptures as subjected to unavoidable frailties and inconveniences arising out of its human element, is described as going forth conquering and to conquer. It is on this principle that is founded the interpretation by Dr. Henry More of the following passage:*—

"And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood; and his Name was called THE WORD OF GOD." "In this vision," he remarks—"You see that the Eternal Word of God, of which the Holy Bible is in some sense and some part a Transcript, is at last upon His Triumph adorned with many crowns."—"Here the scene of things begins in a wonderful manner to be changed, the pure Word of God going forth to battle, with so magnificent an attendance, against the corrupt, superstitious, idolatrous, and contradictions opinions, and fond institutes of that Antichristian body of men over whom the Pope has a special headship and sovereignty; in order to gain an assured victory and to triumph over them."

"That the eyes of this Hero are said to be as a flaming fire, intimates his sharpsightedness; as it is said in the Epistle to the Hebrews, that the Word of God is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, and that there is no creature that is not manifest in his sight, but that all things lie naked and open unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do: where the Written Word and the Eternal Word are jointly spoken of, as here they seem to be in this vision, by an Henopoeia."†

* See his Works, p. 673.

† Rupertus interprets the outermost covering, or vesture of the

According to this account, the parallel between the Living Word and the written Word is recognized by Scripture itself, and is the fundamental principle of the narrative concerning the Word of God in the Apocalypse, where the parallel is embodied into a Vision. It is upon this principle that Swedenborg himself interprets the narrative; an interpretation which I now subjoin, reminding the reader that both* Parkhurst and† Bishop Horsley admit, that the Person of the Word of God is the visible representative of the ever blessed Trinity.

"And He was clothed in a vesture stained with blood, and His name is called the Word of God, signifies Divine Truth in its ultimate sense, or the Word in the letter, to which violence has been offered. By vesture is signified truth investing good; and when said of the Word, is signified the Word in its literal sense, for that is like a garment, wherewith its spiritual and celestial sense is clothed; by blood is signified violence offered to the Lord's Divinity and the Word: the reason why this is signified is, because blood signifies the Lord's Divine Truth in the Word, wherefore by shedding blood, is signified to offer violence to the Lord's Divinity and his Word; by the Word of God is here signified the Word in its literal sense, for to that violence was offered, but not to the Word in its spiritual sense, because the latter sense was not known, and if it had been known, vio-

WORD OF GOD, on which was written "King of kings and Lord of lords," as being the Sacred Scriptures.

* Hebrew Lexicon, art. Shem.

† Biblical Criticism, vol. i., p. 29.

lence would have been offered to it also; see the Doctrine of the New Jerusalem concerning the Sacred Scripture. That violence hath been offered to the Lord's Divinity and Word, appears manifestly from the Roman Catholic religion, and from the religion of the Reformed respecting justification by faith alone. The Roman Catholic religion maintains that the Lord's Humanity is not Divine, for which reason they transferred to themselves all things appertaining unto the Lord; also that the Word is to be interpreted only by themselves; and yet their interpretation is everywhere contrary to the Divine Truth of the Word, as was shewn in the explanation of the eighteenth or foregoing chapter. Hence it is plain that violence hath been offered to the Word by that religion: and in like manner by the religion among the Reformed respecting faith alone, for neither doth this make the Lord's Humanity Divine; it builds theology also upon a single expression of Paul falsely understood, and therefore as it were maketh of no account all that the Lord taught respecting love and charity and good works, which nevertheless are so plain, that any one who hath eyes may see. The same thing was done to the Word by the Jews; it being a religious tenet with them, that the Word was written for none but themselves, and therefore that no others were meant in it, and that the Messiah, who was to come, would exalt them above all the nations of the earth; by means of which prejudices, and many others, they falsified and adulterated everything in the Word; this is meant by the following passages in Isaiah: 'Who is this that cometh from

Edom, with stained garments from Boarah . . . wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like Him that treadeth in the wine-fat?—whence the blood of them is sprinkled upon my garments, and I have stained all my raiment;" (lxiii. 1, 2:) by garments here also are signified the Divine Truths of the Word; by Edom is signified redness, in the present instance redness from blood; hence it is plain, that by being clothed in a vesture stained with blood, and his name being called the Word of God, is signified Divine Truth in its ultimate sense, or the Word in the letter, whereunto violence hath been offered."