Apocalypse Explained, volume 1 - Swedenborg Foundation

APOCALYPSE EXPLAINED 67doctrine, they separate his human from the Divine, and make hishuman like the human of another man; when yet the Divine is inhis human as the soul is in the body. This is why such as these canhave no idea of the Divine; although it is the idea that conjoins,because thought conjoins; and moreover, without conjunction withthe Divine through thought and affection, or what is the same,through faith and love, there is no salvation. It is said thatconjunction through thought and affection is the same asconjunction through faith and love, since what I believe, that Ithink, and what I love, by that I am affected. To believe in theinvisible is much the same as believing in the inmost of nature, anerror to which the mind readily lapses when it indulges in its ownfantasies. Yet there is implanted within everyone, from heaven, andthis by continual influx therefrom, a desire to see what he regards asthe Divine, and this, indeed, under the human form.[2] This desire is implanted in the simpleminded, and also withwell-disposed Gentiles (see Heaven and Hell, n. 82). All suchtherefore, if they have also lived a life of charity, are received by theLord, and heaven is granted them. No others can be received,because they are not conjoined. (That all angels in heaven, also themost wise in ancient times, and all who have spiritual faith, that is,a living faith, both on this earth and on all the earths in theuniverse, see their Divine in thought, because they acknowledge theDivine human, and are therefore accepted by the Lord, see NewJerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine, n. 280–310; Heaven and Hell,n. 79–86, 316, 321; and Earths in the Universe, n. 7, 40, 41, 65,68, 91, 98, 99, 107, 121, 141, 154, 158, 159, 169.) Because thisimplanted desire, which is in everyone from heaven, has beenalmost wholly rejected among the learned of the world, and accessto the Divine thereby debarred, therefore, a new church is nowbeing established by the Lord, among the Gentiles that have notextirpated that idea, and faith along with it. The extirpation fromthe Christian world of this implanted desire had its first beginningwith the Babylonish body, which separated the Lord’s human fromhis Divine, in order that its chief might be acknowledged as thevicar of the Lord’s human, and might thus transfer to himself theLord’s Divine power, saying that the Lord received that power fromthe Father, when in fact it was from himself, because it was from