79. THE FIFTH MEMORABLE RELATION, The angel that had been my guide and companion to the ancients who had lived in the four ages, the golden, the silver, the copper, and the iron, again presented himself to me, and said, "Are you desirous of seeing the age which succeeded those ancient ones, and to know what its quality formerly was, and still is? Follow me, and you shall see. They are those concerning whom Daniel thus prophesied: '_A kingdom shall arise after those four in which iron shall be mixed with miry clay: they shall mingle themselves together by the seed of man: but they shall not cohere one with the other, as iron is not mixed with clay_, Dan. ii. 41-43:'" and he said, "By the seed of man, whereby iron shall be mixed with clay, and still they shall not cohere, is meant the truth of the Word falsified." After he had said this, I followed him, and in the way, he related to me these particulars. "They dwell in the borders between the south and the west, but at a great distance beyond those who lived in the four former ages, and also at a greater depth." We then proceeded through the south to the region bordering on the west, and passed though a formidable forest; for in it there were lakes, out of which crocodiles raised their heads, and opened at us their wide jaws beset with teeth; and between the lakes were terrible dogs, some of which were three-headed like Cerberus, some two-headed, all looking at us as we passed with a horrible hungry snarl and fierce eyes. We entered the western tract of this region, and saw dragons and leopards, such as are described in the Revelation, chap. xii. 3; chap. xiii. 2. Then the angel said to me, "All these wild beasts which you have seen, are not wild beasts but correspondences, and thereby representative forms of the lusts of the inhabitants whom we shall visit. The lusts themselves are represented by those horrible dogs; their deceit and cunning by crocodiles; their falsities and depraved inclinations to the things which relate to worship, by dragons and leopards: nevertheless the inhabitants represented do not live close behind the forest, but behind a great wilderness which lies intermediate, that they may be fully withheld and separated from the inhabitants of the foregoing ages, being of an entirely different genius and quality from them: they have indeed heads above their breasts, and breasts above their loins, and loins above their feet, like the primeval men; but in their heads there is not any thing of gold, nor in their breasts any thing of silver, nor in their loins any thing of brass, no, nor in their feet any thing of pure iron; but in their heads is iron mixed with clay, in their breasts is each mixed with brass, in their loins is also each mixed with silver, and in their feet is each mixed with gold: by this inversion they are changed from men (_homines_) into graven images of men, in which inwardly nothing coheres; for what was