Arcana Coelestia volume 7 - Swedenborg Foundation

ARCANA COELESTIA 3718(n. 5131), and charity is received (n. 5132), and thuscommunication is effected with the interior natural (n. 5133),which is then delivered from the evils whereby the celestialrepresented by Joseph (n. 5086, 5087, 5106) was alienated; whichalienation is signified by his being “carried off by theft” as presentlyfollows. Moreover, when the natural is being regenerated by meansof charity and faith, it is delivered from evils; for evils are thenseparated, and are cast out from the center where they were before,to the circumferences, whither the light of truth from good doesnot reach. In this way are evils separated in man, and yet areretained, for they cannot be entirely destroyed. But with the Lord,who made the natural in himself Divine, evils and falsities wereutterly cast out and destroyed; for the Divine can have nothing incommon with evils and falsities, nor be terminated in them, as isthe case with man; for the Divine is the very being of good and oftruth, which is infinitely removed from what is evil and false.5135. For in being carried off by theft I was carried away. That thissignifies that celestial things were alienated by evil is evident fromthe representation of Joseph, who says these things of himself, asbeing the celestial in the natural (n. 5086–5087, 5106),consequently the celestial things therein; and from the significationof “being carried off by theft” as being to be alienated by evil; for“to steal” is to alienate, and “theft” is the evil which alienates, andalso the evil which claims the celestial things that are in the natural.“Theft” signifies alienation in respect to the abode of which it takespossession, and from which it casts out goods and truths, andwhich it fills with evils and falsities; “theft” also signifies theclaiming of what belongs to others when it attributes to itself andmakes its own the goods and truths which are in that abode, andalso when it applies them to evils and falsities. That it may beknown what “theft” is in the spiritual sense, it is necessary to statehow the case is with evils and falsities when they enter and takepossession of the abode, and also when they claim the goods andtruths which are there.[2] From infancy until childhood, and sometimes till earlymanhood, by instruction from his parents and teachers a man is