Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine WisdomSwedenborg, Emanuel
Religion
Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom
Swedenborg, Emanuel
God (Christianity) -- Love; God (Christianity) -- Wisdom
Consequently, so far as his life is according to wisdom, so far he loves
wisdom; and his life is so far according to wisdom as he purifies himself
from uncleannesses, which are sins; and so far as he does this does he
love wisdom.
423. That love purified by the wisdom in the understanding becomes
spiritual and celestial cannot be seen so clearly by their correspondence
with the heart and lungs, because no one can see the quality of the blood
by which the lungs are kept in their state of respiration. The blood may
abound in impurities, and yet not be distinguishable from pure blood.
Moreover, the respiration of a merely natural man appears the same as the
respiration of a spiritual man. But the difference is clearly discerned
in heaven, for there every one respires according to the marriage of love
and wisdom; therefore as angels are recognized according to that marriage,
so are they recognized according to their respiration. For this reason it
is that when one who is not in that marriage enters heaven, he is seized
with anguish in the breast, and struggles for breath like a man in the
agonies of death; such persons, therefore throw themselves headlong from
the place, nor do they find rest until they are among those who are in a
respiration similar to their own; for then by correspondence they are in
similar affection, and therefore in similar thought. From all this it can
be seen that with the spiritual man it is the purer blood, called by some
the animal spirit, which is purified; and that it is purified so far as
the man is in the marriage of love and wisdom. It is this purer blood
which corresponds most nearly to that marriage; and because this blood
inflows into the blood of the body, it follows that the latter blood is
also purified by means of it. The reverse is true of those in whom love
is defiled in the understanding. But, as was said, no one can test this
by any experiment on the blood; but he can by observing the affections of
love, since these correspond to the blood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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