Life of Emanuel Swedenborg: Together with a brief synopsis of his writings, both philosophical and theologicalWhite, William
Religion
Life of Emanuel Swedenborg: Together with a brief synopsis of his writings, both philosophical and theological
White, William
Mystics -- Sweden -- Biography; Swedenborg, Emanuel, 1688-1772
“All these evils and consequent falses, both hereditary and acquired,
reside in the natural mind. Evils and falses are entirely opposed to
goods and truths; because evils and falses are diabolical and infernal,
and goods and truths are divine and heavenly. The natural mind, which is
in evils and falses, is a form and image of hell, and descends by three
degrees. These three degrees of the natural mind, which is an image and
form of hell, are opposed to the three degrees of the spiritual mind,
which is a form and image of heaven: thus the natural mind which is a
hell, is in complete opposition to the spiritual mind which is a heaven.
All things of the three degrees of the natural mind, are included in
works, which are performed by acts of the body.”
Part Fourth teaches that the Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, created
the universe and all things therein from Himself, and not from nothing;
this would not have been possible if the Lord were not a Divine Man; He
from himself producing the sun of the spiritual world, and by it creating
all things. In the substances and matters of which earths consist, there
is nothing of the Divine in itself; but still they are from the Divine
in itself. All created things in the created universe, viewed from uses,
represent man in an image; this testifies that God is Man. All things
created by the Lord are uses; and they are uses in the order, degree, and
respect, in which they have relation to man, and by man to the Lord their
Creator. Evil uses were not created by the Lord, but originated together
with hell, after man’s fall. The visible things in the created universe
testify that nature has produced nothing, and does produce nothing; but
that the Divine has produced and does produce all things from Himself,
and through the spiritual world.
Part Fifth is devoted to a description of man’s spiritual nature. It
is shown that “the Lord has formed and created in man two receptacles
and habitations for Himself, called the will and the understanding;
the will for His Divine Love, and the understanding for His Divine
Wisdom. The will and understanding are in the brains, in the whole and
every part thereof, and thence in the body, in the whole and every part
thereof. There is a correspondence of the will with the heart, and of the
understanding with the lungs; and all things that can be known of the
will and understanding, or of love and wisdom, consequently all that can
be known of man’s soul, may be known from the correspondence of the heart
with the will, and of the understanding with the lungs.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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