Coronis,
or Appendix,
to
True Christian Religion
Emanuel Swedenborg
PROPOSITION THE FIRST (18 - 20)
18. (6)
From this new heaven the Lord Jehovih derives and produces a new church
on earth, which is effected by a revelation of truths from His mouth, or from
His Word, and by inspiration.
It is written:
John saw the holy city, New
Jerusalem, descending from God out of heaven, prepared as a Bride adorned for
her Husband (Apoc. 21:2).
By "the holy city, New Jerusalem," is meant the
doctrine of the New Church, thus the church as to doctrine; and, by "Jerusalem
descending from God, out of the new heaven," is meant that the true doctrine of
the church is from no other source. That the doctrine descended, is because a
church is a church from doctrine and according to it; without it, a church is no
more a church than a man is a man without members, viscera and organs, or from
the cutaneous covering alone, which only defines his external shape; nor any
more than a house is a house without bed-chambers, dining rooms, and furniture
within, thus from the walls and arched roof alone. It is similar with the church
without doctrine. That "Jerusalem" signifies the church as to doctrine, may be
seen proved from the Word in the work itself, The True Christian Religion (n.
782). From these things, it is manifest that the church on the earth is derived
and produced by the Lord through the angelic heaven.
19. I will mention some strange things, which yet are not strange in heaven;
they are as follow: (1) That the natural world could not exist except from the
spiritual world; consequently, it could not subsist, inasmuch as subsistence is
perpetual existence. (2) That the church cannot exist in man, unless its
internal be spiritual and its external natural. A church purely spiritual does
not exist, nor a church merely natural. (3) Consequently, that there cannot be
raised up any church, nor anything of the church with man, without an angelic
heaven, through which everything spiritual is derived and descends from the
Lord. (4) Since therefore the spiritual and the natural thus make one, it
follows that the one cannot exist and subsist without the other; the angelic
heaven not without the church with man, nor the church with him without the
angelic heaven; for, unless the spiritual flow into and terminate in the
natural, and rest therein, it is like a prior without a posterior, thus like an
efficient cause without an effect, and like an active without a passive, which
would be like a bird perpetually flying in the air without any resting place on
the earth. It is also like the mind of a man perpetually thinking and willing,
without any organ of sense and motion in the body, to which it may descend and
produce the ideas of its thought and bring into operation the efforts of its
will. (5) These things are adduced, to the end that it may be perceived or
known, that as the natural world cannot exist without the spiritual world, nor
conversely the spiritual world without the natural world, so neither can there
be a church on the earth unless there be an angelic heaven through which it may
exist and subsist, nor conversely an angelic heaven unless there be a church on
the earth. (6) The angels know this; on which account, they bitterly lament when
the church on earth is desolated by falsities and consummated by evils; and then
they compare the state of their life with drowsiness; for then heaven is to them
as a seat withdrawn, and like a body deprived of feet; but when the church on
the earth has been restored by the Lord, they compare the state of their life to
wakefulness.
20. That the Lord derives and produces the New Church on earth through the New
Heaven by means of a revelation of truths from His mouth, or from His Word, and
by inspiration, will be shown in the section on the four churches in their
order, especially on the Israelitish Church, and on the present Christian
Church. It should be known that when hell has increased, and has passed over the
great interstice or gulf fixed between itself and heaven (Luke 16:26), and has
raised up its back even to the confines of the heavens where the angels are,
which came to pass during the interval of the vastation and consummation of the
church, not any doctrine of the church could be conveyed by the Lord through
heaven to the men of the earth. The reason is that man is then in the midst of
satans; and satans envelop his head with their falsities, and inspire the
delights of evil and the consequent pleasures of falsity, whereby all the light
out of heaven is darkened, and all the agreeableness and pleasantness of truth
is intercepted.
[2] As
long as this state continues, not any doctrine of truth and good out of heaven
can be infused into man, because it is falsified; but after this tangled veil of
falsities, or covering of the head by satans, has been taken away by the Lord,
which is effected by the Last Judgment (of which above, in Article 4), then man
is led in a freer and more spontaneous spirit to discard falsities and to
receive truths. With those who adapt themselves, and suffer themselves to be led
by the Lord, the doctrine of the New Heaven, which is the doctrine of truth and
good, is afterwards conveyed down and introduced, like the morning dew falling
from heaven to the earth, which opens the pores of plants, and sweetens their
vegetable juices: and it is like the manna which fell in the mornings, and was
in appearance:
Like coriander seed, white, and in taste like a cake kneaded
with honey (Exod. 16:31).
It is also like seasonable rain, which refreshes
the newly-ploughed fields and causes germination; and it is like the fragrance
exhaling from fields, gardens, and flowery plains, which the breast gladly and
readily draws in with the air. But, still, the Lord does not compel, nor does He
urge anyone against his will, as one does with whips a beast of burden; but He
draws and afterwards continually leads him who is willing, in all appearance as
though the willing man did goods and believed truths of himself, when yet it is
from the Lord, who operates every genuine good of life and every genuine truth
of faith in him.
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