Angelic Wisdom about Divine ProvidenceSwedenborg, Emanuel
Religion
Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence
Swedenborg, Emanuel
Providence and government of God -- Christianity
111. ( iii) _The internal cannot be purified from the lusts of evil as
long as evils in the external man are not removed, for these impede._
This follows from what has been said above, that the external of man's
thought is in itself what the internal of his thought is and that they
cohere as what is not only in the other but also from the other; one
cannot be removed, therefore, unless the other is at the same time. This
is true of any external which is from an internal, and of anything
subsequent from what is prior, and of every effect from a cause.
[2] As lusts together with slynesses make the internal of thought with
evil persons, and the enjoyments of the lusts together with scheming make
the external of thought in them, and the two are joined into one, it
follows that the internal cannot be purified from the lusts as long as
the evils in the external man are not removed. It should be known that
man's internal will is in the lusts; his internal understanding in the
slynesses; his external will in the enjoyments of the lusts; and his
external understanding in the sly scheming. Anyone can see that lusts and
their enjoyments make one, that slynesses and scheming also do, and that
the four are one series and as it were make a single bundle. From this
again it is evident that the internal, consisting of lusts, cannot be
cast out except on the removal of the external, consisting of evils.
Lusts produce evils by their enjoyments, and when evils are deemed
allowable, as they are when will and understanding agree on it, the
enjoyments and the evils make one. It is well known that assent is deed;
this is also what the Lord said:
If anyone looks on the woman of another to lust after her, he has already
committed adultery with her in his heart (Mt 5:28).*
The same is true of all other evils.
* The Greek is simply "on a woman" and does not have the word here
rendered "of another." Though Swedenborg quotes the verse several times
in his works he seems not to have checked as he usually did beyond the
rendering of the Schmidius Latin Bible which he used.
112. From this it may now be evident that for a person to be purified
from the lusts of evil, evils must by all means be removed from the
external man, for the lusts have no way out before. If no outlet exists,
they remain within and breathe out enjoyments and so incite man to
consent, thus to deed. Lusts enter the body by the external of thought;
when there is consent, therefore, in the external of thought they are
instantly in the body; the enjoyment felt is bodily. See in the treatise
_Divine Love and Wisdom_ (nn. 362-370) that the body, thus the whole man,
is what the mind is. This can be illustrated by comparisons, and by
examples.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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