1 DE HEMELSCHE LEER
A MONTHLY MAGAZINE
DEVOTED TO THE
DOCTRINE OF GENUINE TRUTH
OUT OF THE LATIN WORD
ORGAN OF NOVA DOMINI
ECCLESIA QUAE EST NOVA HIEROSOLYMA-THE LORD'S NEW CHURCH WHICH IS NOVA
HIEROSOLYMA
EXTRACTS FROM THE
ISSUES SEPTEMBER 1936 TO JULY 1938 (ENGLISH TRANSLATION AND ENGLISH ORIGINALS)
SEVENTH FASCICLE
s-GRAVENHAGE SWEDENRORG
GENOO'ISCHAP NASSAOPLEIN 2i
1939
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APOCALYPSIS REVELATA
918
Et tenl,plum
non vidi
in ea, qu.ia Dmninus Deus Onlnipotens
Temptum ejus est et Agnus, significat quod in hac Eccles;a non aliquod
externu", separatum ab interno erit.
APOCALYPSE REVEALED 918
And I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God Almighty is the
3 DE HEMELSCHE LEER
EXTRACT FROM THE ISSUE FOR SEPTEMBER 1936
"AND I SAW A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH AND
THERE WAS NO
AN ADDRESS BY N. A. RIDGWAY AT
“And I saw a New Heaven and a New Earth; for the first
heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.”
APOCALYPSE XXI : 1.
In introducing this
subject, it should be remembered that all religion is of life, and the life of
religion is to do good. With that truth before us we shall hold the correct perspective,
because there is a positive application of the text, as in all truths of
religion, to our daily life.
Observe also, that it
was JOHN who saw all these things. John
signifies love to the Lord. If we have a
John in us, that is love to the Lord- we shall see, and if we have no John in
us, we shall not see, a New Heaven and a New Earth, with the passing of the
first or spurious heaven and earth. And, without a John in us, there still will
be the sea.
In order to get a starting
point on this vision, attested to and seen by John, and so that we may obtain a
focus on the dominant feature in relation to the lives of men, we can classify
this teaching under two main heads: its effect on the Church on earth, which is
important, because it is
our responsibility and
duty; and, its effect on the individual Church
in man, our very selves, which is vital, as being our foremost
responsibility.
As
men and women of the organized New Church we understand, from study of the
Latin Word, that t.his vision and prophesy, foretold in the correspondential
way of the Word, means that, in the place of the imaginary heavens which had
been gathering the peoples of this earth for hundreds of years, and which, in
fact, they had created for themselves out of their own false doctrines - in the
4
place
of these false heavens, and by means of a Judgment, the Last Judgment, the Lord
Himself created a New Heaven, consisting, as a nucleus, of those people who
were of the old church and holding the old Christian faiths, but not in
them; by virtue of this distinction that they were those "who had
worshipped the Lord and lived according to His Commandments in the Word; in
whom therefore there is charity and faith; in which Heaven also are all the
infants of Christians", A.R. 876.
We
note here however that this New Heaven was not formed by the Lord until "the
first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more
sea", which has a very definite hearing on what we in ourselves must first
accomplish, as of ourselves, before progress can be made.
We
must therefore get away fmm the situation as it existed in heaven, or rather,
in the spiritual world, and the external view of the text, as past history, and
pass on to the higher plane namely, the vital bearing of this teaching on the
Church on earth - vital because it is our responsibility and duty. It is from
us as individuals that the Church as a whole is either living or dying. Our
general tendency is to consider the Latin Word historically, to regard most
things in it as interesting events that have passed - very interesting indeed,
but nevertheless, passed events - although, on second thoughts, so to speak, we
realize, that in some way, they have a bearing on our everyday mode of life. Is
there not, right here, the necessity
for a very definite shifting of values - a moving of the mental point of
concentration? For, although there has been a passage of events of great
importance that are recorded, the lesson does not lie in the past - it lies most
decidedly in the present; the all important present.
If
we stop to consider the present, we find that nothing is so existent. As with
the Lord all things of time are present, so with man the only actuality of time
is the present. What is actual of the past is present in the present, or it no
longer exists; and the future will only become actual as it lives in the
prespnt. I emphasize the all-importance of the present '0 that we may better appreciate that all things of the Word apply most
emphatically to what is now, as also to
what is tomorrow when
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that
in turn becomes today, if we are to live, and if we are to become inmates of
the New Heaven.
But before this can happen the first heaven
and the first earth in us must pass away, an there must be no more sea, there
must be no more externals of Heaven only, without the internal infilling them
with use.
That
the first heaven and the first earth in the spiritual world have actually
passed away, is only a matter of passing historical interest, yet it is a
teaching of the Word of the Lord, and therefore must be in some way of vital
interest to us, in our daily lives; so we must seek and find that which is of
vital interest to us as living men and women of the organized New Church.
If
we truly search, we shall find that there are within us, the false or
first heaven and earth. Here we see a closer association with the two headings
or plan"" first mentioned
in this paper, namely, what concerns the Church on earth, and what concerns the
things dealing with the effect of the text on the individual Church in man,
which latter is vital, as being our foremost responsibility.
To
repeat: if we truly search we shall find the false or first heaven within our
very selves, which must pass away before the New Heaven can enter, for the Lord
said that no man puts new wine into old bottles, else the bottles break and the
wine runneth out, but they put new wine into new bottles and both are
preserved.
The
process of finding in ourselves and seeing the false heavens and earths is not
simple, for in the early stages we are very blind. We begin by seeing them
outside of ourselves and indeed we must so see them before we can see them
within ourselves.
In
order to find the first heaven or falsities within .ourselves,
so as to combat them, it will be found necessary to examine the old church, and
its conduct, and it is more than probable that we shall find sympathy with its
conduct. Herein lies the secret of discovering-
the evils of our own life, for by that means we find that which is witbin
ourselvesl our organizations, and our lives. which we then for the
first time recognize to be in opposition to the New Order: Behold I make all
things New. If at tbis stage we are unwilling to see things as they really
are, we shall, on finding what mnst be disorderly, falsify it from our
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proprial
wills and interpret it into what is orderly, because these things of discord
are in accord with our propriums; and, in our propriums is the very resting
place af the first heaven or false faith and life. The more convincing the propnum's confirmation, the more
sure we may be that what it canfirms is in discord with all thing new, and
with the living Ward of the Lord.
The
search mnst be first for falsities outside of ourselves
that we may find the things that are false within ourselves; and until we find
and condemn the evils and falsities of the world; we cannot see, and will not
find these evils and falsities within ourselves. Not seeing them within
ourselves we will not recognize them to be evil, but from our propriums will
call them good, and will continue to think aurselves and our organizations to
be the
We
must find these evils, and, having found them, we must fearlessly condemn them
and point them out. This discovering them, from the Word, is the ever present
Doctrine of the Church, and, in finding evils and falsities outside of ourselves we must realize that they are
within ourselves.
We must not be tolerant
of evils and falsities, whether outside or within ourselves. Tolerance of what
is evil and false is a very ineffective weapon to use for combating it. We may
and must have internal tolerance of the person perpetrating an evil or
expounding a falsity, but not external tolerance. An instance in point is the
method adopted 1n dealing with a child who has in some way transgressed. To the
child, the parent or teacher, who is seeking to cure, appears stern, angry, and
intolerant, although, if he is a wise parent or teacher, he is internally
forgiving. It was
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also so with the Lord,
who often appeared in wrath, yet we know He was and is infinitely forgiving.
This external state of
intolerance should apply also to disorders, evil and false, seen within the
whole Church. We first see them within the old Christian church, and, until we
have seen them there we shall not see them within the
In analysing falsity
and evil we shall find it easier to be intolerant of them in the old church,
and increasingly more difficult to maintain this intolerance as the focus of
truth comes down through all the circles of the target, nearer and nearer home,
until, finally, its light concentrates on the central point: EGO. There we may even
find that what should be intolerance has changed to sweet tolerance. Yet, in
reality, here, in ourselves individually, lies the very battlefield, victory on
which can only be achieved by right intolerance of falsities and then of evils.
But the road to discovery starts tar aheld, and when we have found it there, we
must go on finding it, nearer and nearer home, until we see it in our very
selves. And here the temptations and combats are the real battle, to the end
that all religion may have'relation to life.
To illustrate this, let
us fairly and squarely- consider some of the things that we have, as it were,
regarded as accomplishments within the Church, achievements we believe we
have made by drawing Doctrine from the Word, and to which we are prone to point
with satisfaction, as accomplished facts.
Among these are
distinctive social life, and distinctive
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this. Indeed we
should risk being so called, risk almost anything, for the end, and try to face
the truth in its nakedness. When we have seen these facts clearly, and only
then, can we cooperate with the Lord in the passing away of the first heaven
and earth, so that New ones can replace them, and so that there shall be no
more sea.
The proprium
loves these evil things, and wishes and hopes that they be not discovered in
the
Take also
distinctive
As it is, we
find, by examining the so called distinctive
These things of
education must first and foremost have things eternal as their ends; and
somehow we must find a way of making our education really and vitally of the
As in education, so in all things of
ourselves, our societies, our Church as a whole, we must look to the
Lord in His Word, and shun evils M sins against God. And, if there is to be no more sea, we must find wherein we are only in
the externals of faith not infilled with the internals of faith.
And I saw a New Heaven and a New Earth; for the
first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea.
9 DE
HEMELSCHE LEER
EXTRACT FROM THE ISSUE FOR DECEMBER 1936
USE AND ENJOYMENT
BY ANTON ZELLING.
"According to the uses the natural man also becomes as it were
spiritual which happens when the natural man feels the enlivening of the use
out of the spiritual".
DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM, n. 251.
The end is the all of
the cause and the all of the effect, so that it is said the first end, the
middle eud, and the last end; not three ends but one, as soul, body, and
action; as love, wisdom, and use are one. To think three gods is to set three
ends - with an intention; which intention is to deny, of the one End, the all
which rules through cause and effect; the all, thus the essence. The universe
has been created from tbat all; the denial of that all leads inevitahly to a
creation out of nothing, as much nothing as the proprium of which in the
delusive idea it is the equal. Three gods or three ends cannot be one and
remain one. but always one will rule over the two others and gradually destroy
them. The old churches, which think three gods, therefore have, each of them a
definite preference; the Protestant for a father alone, the Roman Catholic for
a son alone, the Quakers and other heretical sects for a holy spirit alone.
Each of those churches indeed assumes the two other gods of the trine, but only
as negligible quantities.
To think three gods is
necessarily to elect one god, according to the ruling infernal love. The
entire man may be known from that election. That the Angels at the first
approach of a spirit perceive of what religion he is, is because the Angels are
Angels out of this that they think and believe in ends, in causes, Of in
effects; the celestial in the ends, the spiritnal in the causes, the natural in
the effects. And to think in those is to be in the all thereof. Otherwise it is
not in those or in themselves, but concerning those or outside themselves. It
is the all, or the fnll presence
10
of the Lord, that gives
the perception. Now the end is not the all of the cause except for the purpose
of being the all of the effect. The celestial Angels, who are in the ends,
therefore at the first approach or from the sphere of the spirit perceive
whether, yea yea, nay nay, the effect or his life - and this is the religion -
essentially answers the first end, the Love; the spiritual Angels, who are in
the causes, perceive how the effect answers the middle end, Wisdom; the natural
Angels, who are in the effects, perceive in what the effect answers the' last
end, Use. It is, in a threefold degree, always by the effect or by the fruit
that the tree is known, a tree planted along streams of water or a tree in
hell.
For this reason they who
think three gods purpose to take from the last end, which is the effect, the
all out of the first end, and this is just what matters; in order that it may
become a natural separated from its prior, more interior or higher parts, these
being the middle and the first ends; which separated effect afterwards serves
to counterfeit the conjoined effect with art and study, in order to justify or
to sanctify the propriallife or the life of the proprium in the eyes of one's
self and of the world. To think three gods therefore is done with an evil
intention, evil and therefore dark, for which reason it is written that they
think three gods, but do not dare to say so openly for fear of ridicule by
sound reason, and of thus losing honour and gain. For sound reason has it from
the universal influx that there is one God, or that God is one, Of, what is the
same, that there is one End, or that the End is one. As has been said, to think
three gods is to set three ends, not one end of three degrees, but a triple
end; not the first, the middle, and the last end, but a first, a second, and a
third end. End and cause are father and mother of the effect. They who think
three gods, trespass against the fourth Commandment by lwt honouring Father and
Mother. And, because the trespassing against one commandment is the trespassing
against all commandments, they who think three gods or set three ends, in
addition to being desecrators are also thieves and murderers. They are to be
understood by the husbandmen who, when the time of the fruit drew near, killed
the son and heir of the travelling householder to keep the vineyard for
themselves, MATT. XXI: 33--41. Tha.t the
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householder had
travelled abroad signifies that the Lord leaves the free and the rational of
man untouched as if hi, own; the time of the fruit drawing near, has reference
to the effect, and the all of that is the Son's from the Father. The evil
husbandmen are the thinkers of three gods who deny the threefold end by robbing
the effect of its all or its soul, spirit, and life out of the first end. Then
when the lord of the vineya.rd shall come, that is, the Second Coming of the
Lord, "He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out the
vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their
seasons". To let out is to endow with the celestial proprium; the vineyard
signifies the Doctrine of the Church; and concretely, they who live following
the Doctrine; the life following the Doctrine is the fruits in their seasons,
the effects which are purely of the first End or of the one God, that is, the
Lord's and thus will all be given to Himself because the one God or the first
End is the all in all things of those effects. The miserable destruction is
the death of the old churches, the damnation of the thinkers of three gods, a
suicide and a self-damnation.
The question now arises:
what is an effect separated from its end and cause, what and why? Is not a
separated effect a thing of vain reason? For an effect wlthout its end and
cause cannot exist, and consequently is just as inconceivahle as unbelievable.
But it is the same with this as with the natural separated from the celestial
and the spiritual; also the same as with the external worship separated from
the internal; both, that natural and that worship, are purely infernal. For
separated from the spiritual and the internal does not mean separated from the
spiritual world - for indeed, without continual influx out of the spiritual
world nothing can come into existence, exist, or remain in existence, because
no thing from nothing can become something. However, the spiritual world
includes the Heavens, the world of spirits, and the hells. To be separated from
the spiritual or from the internal therefore means to be in consociatlon not
with the Heavens, but with the hells. This is because all words in the first instance
or in the genuine sense have reference to the only Lord. Thus for him who in all his affections,
thoughts, and deeds has the Lord in His Church
12
before his eyes, to such
an extent that consciously as well as unconsciously or subconsciously he
continually thinks nothing but the Church in all of his life, there is not one
word that is not from the Lord and does not return to the Lord. Wherever in the
Word it says end, in the highest sense the Lord with regard to Love is
understood; where cause, there the Lord with regard to Wisdom; where effect,
there the Lord with regard to Use.
End and cause, as said,
are the parents of the effect. Who thinks the Church, here at once thinks the
celestial marriage of the Good and the True, or of Love and Wisdom, in the will
and the understanding, with uses as children, sons and daughters. Married
partners are conceivable without children, but not children without parents.
By the children or the fruits the parental tree is known. In man love and
wisdom form his marriage, and together with the uses that which is called his
religion. That which the Angels at once upon the first approach of a spirit
perceive is wllether the all of the first End is in his gezin [family] or his gezindte
[creed], thus whether the genuine conjugial is therein, or an imitated
conjugial, or the whorish. The Dutch word gezindte
used in the sense of religion is connected with gezin and gezindheid [family
and disposition], just as the ee of eegade [wife] with eeuwig in the old sense of law, faith, marriage, nature or
disposition, purity, chastity, modesty (see Sixth
Fascicle, p. 177). From this consideration it is evident that religion is
the marriage of love and wisdom, and the household of love, wisdom, and use.
Hence in the HANDBOOK FOR THE GENERAL CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM IN HOLLAND
this precious word was said: "If the Church is not in the household, it is
nowhere", a word whereof the deep sense now opens anew. For we can now
also read in that word: "If the Church is not in the religion, it is nowhere".
Thus family and religion become one living concept, in which Love, Wisdom, and
Use, or the first end, the middle end, and the last end, together are one in
simultaneous order, Heaven in smallest form.
Let us proceed. The
effect or the last end is the first end in ultimates. They who think three
gods, and thus set three ends, evidently have the purpose of separating in the
effect the first end from its ultimates, of appropriating to them-
13
selves the ultimates and
of throwing away behind their backs the end, or treading it under foot. What is
this, to separate the first end from its ultimates, and why? Arriving at this
point of our meditation, as if at the bend of a road, we suduenly see a new vista
opening out before us, which gives a surprising insight into what is nothing
less than the essence of evil. For the tent-companion of the word uitwerking [effect] is the word nut [use]; and the tentcompanion of the
word nut [use], considered in itself,
is the word genot [enjoyment]; nut and genot [use and enjoyment] are of the same root; nuttigen [to partake of, to eat or to
drink] is genieten [to enjoy] and genieten is nuttigen. Now the essence of evil is this horrible thing, from
which an Angel at once turns away: the separation of the use from the
enjoyment, to enjoy the enjoyment, and to tread down the use. In an
intellectual vision to some degree elevated it would seem well-nigh impossible
that there could be anything so screamingly insane as a spewed out and trodden
down use, after the enjoyment thereof has been enjoyed; and nevertheless all
the world is nothing but that evil, and only by the very strictest
self-compulsion is the man who is about to be reformed anything hut that evil.
The fall of the
To what extent the
separation between use and enjoyment is destructive of order, and insane,
appears from a closer consideration of the false religions of the old churches.
Those churches are called old, decrepit, un-renewable or dead because of their
thinking three gods. As said, the characteristic trait of the Protestant church
is its preference for a father alone. For him who in all things thinks the
Church, the word Father signifies the Lord with reference to the Love, the
Divine Good. With the Protestants this Good is considered a true, a true alone,
elevated to such an extent above the good and the use that these, namely the
good and the use, thereby disappear into the shade and into nothingtness. Their
doctrine of election at bottom is
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the election of an
imaginary true personified in a grim jehovah. What matters to them is to be the
true brother in the true doctrine. A word snch as "the Doctrine of the
genuine True" would not occur to their minds even in a dream, for the
genuine true signifies the conjngial. true, the true conjoined with the good
into a marriage, and thus in its effect with the nses forming a household, a
generation, a family. For them the true rigidity of doctrine justifies any kind
of life whatever, since with the cross all hereditary debts have been cleared.
So as with them the true obscures the good, the remorse concerning the
hereditary sin confessed with the lips obscures all actual evil with them,
which, in an instant, on the very deathbed, by the confession of the true
faith loses its damning effect. As said, the characteristic trait of the Roman
Catholic church is its preference for a son alone. For him who in all things
thinks the Church, the word Son signifies the Lord with reference to the
Wisdom, the Divine True. With the Roman Catholics reversely, this True is
considered a good, a good alone, elevated to such an extent above the true that
it makes it, namely the true, disappear into the shade and into nothingness.
Use alone they will allow of, because the good work pertains to the good.
Originally this putting of the good in the prior place was an acknowledgment of
the Divine Majesty in the Human of the Lord, see the BRIEF EXPOSITION, n. 108,
but in their thinking of three gods and in their setting of three ends, the
Roman Catholics fell into another fault. By putting the body as middle-end into
the first place and by idolizing it as good, the concept of the son became ever
more corporeal, until at length the worship of a son passed over on to the
mother; the middle cause became a means and even a means justifying the end,
the occasional cause became the incidental occasion for all kinds of arbitrary
devotions. As a result of this there arose the exaggerated cult of Mary to which
the invocation of the saints fits so closely that all Roman Catholic saints
are considered to be more the sons of Mary than the son himself who is put up
for god, of whom nevertheless they carry around everywhere the sign of the
cross for the warding off of evils. Just as in popedom as a .vicarship the
representative puts the represented into the shade. where the papal
infallibility is a quality stolen from the
15
Holy Spirit; an
infallibility of what is not the Divine, proceeding; thns a quality withont substance,
an attribute or a predicate without subject. And as with them the good obscures
the true, the actual evil confessed by them at stated hours of confession
obscures all hereditary evil. This last remains untouched; this church with
world-wide power stands powerless against hereditary evil, and rightly, for the
sale weapon against hereditary evil is the genuine True, which therefore also
is the sense of the Second Coming of the Lord. In His Coming the Lord set up
fixed limitations to the actual evil by subjugating the hells and ordering the
Heavens; in His Second Coming He brings hereditary evil to a standstill and to
regression. Now while the Protestants consider the actual evil as not being of
prime importance in the final entire justification, the Roman Catholics
consider the hereditary evil as not being of prime importance in the gradual
sanctification, the former by preferring the sole apparent true, the latter by
preferring the sale apparent good. It is characteristic of both churches that
each, among many varieties shows two principal currents that contradict and
neutralize each other. The protestant church alongside of an icy calvinistic
doctrinal rigidity shows a diluted liberalism which runs almost to free
thought; the Roman Catholic church alongside of a good-humoured worldliness,
from which expressions such as patertie
goedleven [jolly friar] and smnlpaap [pampering
father] have entered and remained in the Dutch language, kumvs an icy convent
discipline with hermits and flagellants. To these two Roman Catholic ultimates
the primitive Christian Church degenerated; to the former two Protestant
ultimates the genuine core of the first Reformation. Add to all these
absurdities the not less abominable absurdity of the afore-mentioned sects who
wish by force to claim the effects of a holy-spirit-alone in enthusiastic
states which leads to a, witches’ Sabbath of prophetic shammin s crazes,
frenzies, and fananmsms. If one were to examine these sects more closely, it
would appear that piece by piece they fit together as just so many hells, with
"the woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess", Apoc. II :
20, as principal of the devils.
The motives for these
three principal forms of thinking three gods are plainly ambition, greed of gain,
and lust of
16
dominion. What lies at
the bottom of these motives is plain: to reserve to one's self in the natural a
separated effect for the proprium, or in other words, to maintain a given
sensual pleasure, to excuse, yea to glorify it. From the word genot [enjoyment] the words genotzncht [lust of enjoyment] and genotziek [eager for enjoyment] have
been formed. Well then, the doctrines of three gods diversely formulated hide
various kinds of these lusts of enjoyment. The worship out of a thinking of
three gods rests on the external worship of the Jews, imbued with corporeal
sensuality, this again with cruelty, this again with avarice, the one within
the other, the avarice as inmost enjoyment, thus the source of all their evil
lusts and diseases. With the Protestants
these lusts or diseases have their seat in cruelty, thence their surly, chilly,
bare houses of worship; with Roman Catholics in luxury, thence their pompous
temples and chapels, where for a large part art also has been drawn down from
its origin, essence, and use; with the above-mentioned sects in a hysterical
running wild. They all fall under the Lord's judgment: "Ye devour widows'
houses, and for a pretence make long prayer", MATT. XXIII: 14. Here to
devour [that is, to eat] does not signify to partake of [Dutch nuttigen, to take for use], but to
abuse where there might have been a use; and this by killing the longings for
the true, these are the widows, with false things, this is the pretence of long
prayer; the widows houses signifies the religions as marriages, households,
houses, generations, families. Here too the essence of the evil is clearly
noticeable: to persevere in a separated effect and thereby to pretend an appearance
of use for the sake of the sensual enjoyment.
It is therefore of the
very greatest vital interest, to begin to see, alongside of all these infernal
opposites, the orderly celestial relation of use and enjoyment; for in the
effect, or in the last end, use and enjoyment are together and one, but
differently with the celestial and differently with the infernal. The abuse of
the free and the rational has disturbed the celestial order in the latter, has
torn off the use from the enjoyment and thus separated them beyond recognition,
forgetful of the end and thus forgetful of God; that separation therefore is
the source of all heresies. The Doctrine now should teach the good, true,
useful use anew. For we must continually realize that the thinking
17
of three gods or the
setting of three ends by no means is a vanquished standpoint in the New Chnrch;
everywhere where the evil in any evil of whatever slight kind is not shunned,
the thinking of three gods is present at once, for each enjoyment separately
enjoyed, split from its use and pnt to the fore, robs the cause from the all of
the effect, and the end from the all of the cause. So the end is no longer
three-fold and of three degrees, but three in number, fallen asunder, jumbled
together; the influx of the first end into the last is broken, and in so much
as Heaven is then closed, hell opens. The evil in any evil, or the essence of
evil lies .in making the enjoyment of use sensual, exterior, corporeal; see
there a true of life which can never enough be considered and can never enough
be made of life.
Now before we proceed, a
few striking examples will be asked for of the difference between use and
enjoyment conjoined, and use and enjoyment sepamted. Well, consider only the
difference between repentance and remorse. Genuine repentance has penitence for
fruit, and how sweet the bliss thereof is experience teacbes. Remorse denies
penitence with the visible purpose of remaining in the evil enjoyment,
forgetful of the use, forgetful of the end, and thus forgetful of God. And so
many other words may be contrasted in which the difference clearly appears;
compare for example to eat and to tuck; to drink and to guzzle; to sup and to
cram; to read and to devour; to talk and to chatter; to see and to peep; to
worship nd to idolize; diligence and blind zeal, jealousy, emulation; wealth
and luxury; abundance and excess; judgment and criticism; laughter and
derision; to believe and to be superstitious; to be saving and to be
aavaricious; wise and clever; discretion and policy; miracle and magic; piety
and bigotry – this list maybe lengthened without end. But let us stand still at the word vroom [pious], and let us admire therein
the multiplicity and the unity of natural spiritual significations which stamp
it as an original or an eastern or oriental word in the language, a word of
religion in the full effect, full of the all of the first end, through the
middle end into the last end, use and enjoyment one to eternity. As an adjective it formerly signified useful;
as a substantive advantage, gain, use, profit; as verb 1. to grow up, to become
stalwart,
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strong, powerful,
virtuous, courageous, brave, to strive forward; 2. to be of advantage or good
for; 3. to plnck the fruit of something, to draw the benefits of something; 4.
to be useful, to be of avail, think of the German frommen; 5. to fall to one's share. We might therefore say that the
Angels at the first approach perceive the
vroomheid [piety] of a spirit; for in the piety, thus understood anew or as
to its original meaning, is the all of religion, or the tree in its fruit.
Everywhere where use and enjoyment are piously conjoined, there is the genuine
good in its genuine true, and everywhere where the use has been separated from
the enjoyment, there is an apparent good next to an apparent true, or the evil
in its false; and reversely, for the one is in the cause of the other. As soon
as a good exceeds its true, or a true its good, the enjoyment begins to
separate itself from its use, and this because then the enjoyment no longer
proceeds from the use but from the infernal proprium, and no longer is natural
spiritual, but only sensuously natural. The continnal ordering of the heavens
from the Lord therefore is a continual renewal or creation of the unity of use
and enjoyment in the effect; for it is known that also the Angels from
themselves, or left to themselves, would strive straight for hell; and in what
else is tl.is the case than in the enjoyment separated from use, for this is
being left to oneself. Now the daily penitence on earth corresponds to the
continual ordering of the Heavens; in this penitence an evil enjoyment dies,
whereupon a new use puts a good enjoyment in the place thereof; and this so
often until the man has become entirely and altogether new.
"The
evil in any evil" we said; for it is easily done, separating the essence of evil from the
evil things, then shunning the evil with the lips in a purposely vague generality,
with the lips because the essence has not been seen, and then afterwards making
the evil things count as mere idiosyncrasies. Properly speaking this is a
separating of the actual evil from the hereditary evil by making the actual
evil into an enormous theoretical point of detestation, as externally manifest
as in anyway possible, with the evident externally manifest as in anyway
possible, with the evident purpose of letting the hereditary eil interiorly eat
its way on, without any cooperation as from one’s self to doom it to a
standstill and to retrogression. The
Lord’s parable concerning
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platter and cup in the
Second Coming signifies: "You cleanse the outside to such an extent that
it is given the appearance of being actually not-evil, but from within an
untouched hereditary evil transudes; but know the clammy outside wall in each
drop coming through the pores, witnesses against you; cleanse first the
inside". All things in which the natural man wishes to be left free, all
things which he calls his own things, to which he is attached and that are
attached to him as domestic animals to their master, without exception are evil
things, of which he will not see the essence, thus of which he will not
investigate the fathership, and to which he would bend round even the Doctrine
of the genuine True if only he could; nevertheless, whoso has a trace left of
his own things in that sense, is not worthy of the Doctrine, for doctrine is
not the Doctrine unless its all is in the effect or in the life; and whoso has
no part in the all of the Doctrine has no part in anything at all of it. He may
like a Protestant pride himself in the "true doctrine", an external without
an internal, salt having lost its savour, because the conjoining means is
lackrng; but in no way it is the Doctrine of the Genuine True, for the Doctrine
of the Genuine True is in no way a true doctrine to swear by, but the good
Doctrine, the nseful Doctrine, good and useful as a lamp to live by. All who think
three gods and set three ends are perjurers who swear by the god and the end
they have elected. There are those who swear by Heaven, that is, by a heaven
without the Divine True proceeding from the Lord, thus without the Lord; there
are those who swear by the earth, that is, by a church without the Divine True
there, thus by a body without a soul, consequently likewise without the Lord;
there are those who swear by Jerusalem, that is, by a spirit without holiness
or a holiness without spirit, for Jerusalem is the Doctrine of the True out of
the Word, thus the Holy Spirit, and consequently the Lord; there are those who
swear by the head, that is, by the true which a man himself believes to be
true, the summary of the three preceding groups, for all of them desire
wickedly and lustfully to confirm the Divine True from man and not from the Lord,
for to swear is nothing else than to confirm, see A.C. 9166. These four forms
of perjury are directly opposed to the Lord's commandment, to love thy God with
all thy heart, with all thy soul, with
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all thy sirength, with
all thy mind, these being the four receptacles of the Lord as Heaven, the
Earth, the New Jerusalem, and the Head, while the word "all" has
reference to the all of the end, the all of the cause, the all of the effect.
Their perjured swearing thus aims at maintaining the things unlawfully
appropriated.
The father of one's own
things, good-naturedly indicated as hobbies and knick-knacks in civil life, is
the devil; and the soul derived from him, or the essence, again and again is
the enjoyment torn loose from the use, use and enjoyment split asunder as the
split snake's tongue and the split goat's hoof, of old times attributed to the
devil. These things sound harsh and dreadful, because with them something in
the proprium begins to crack and creak, so that the cry of distress arises: Who
then can be saved? But these things are not so harsh and so dreadful but that
the unpostponed daily penitence has full power to takle them, for the Lord has
given he hopeful prospect: “My yoke is easy, and My burden is light”, MATT XI :
30.
The Word teaches that a
heavenly society is the more perfect in the measure in which each Angel is more
his. What then is the difference between "being his", and "being
his own"? Whoso wishes to be left free and not meddled with, claims the
right of heing allowed to have his proprial things, and he could brilliantly
refer to the mentioned teaching, namely that in his own things he is his,
which cannot but be of benefit to the society. Here a remark from one of the
Scientific Works may serve as a serious warning:
"When a name which
is given to any unknown quality becomes familiar to us, we are apt to think, after
a frequent use of it, that we clearly understand the essence of everything
that name comprehends. But if in such cases we only ask ourselves: What is
this? Whence is this? and if we persevere in the question, we shall find that
instead of going forwards, we have only been retrograding from things more
known to things more unknown, and from these again to others most
unknown", ECON. ANIM. KINGD., I, n. 64.
It is the same also with the proprium, and in order to come to realize
the distinction between the human or the angelic "his" and the
proprium of man or Angel, a long path in life or a long road of experience must
be travelled, while at
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first sight and later
with an obtuse sight it seems as if they are self-evident and even synonymous
terms.
Just as all Angels have
been men, just so all celestial propriums have been natural propriums. "No
one becomes an Angel, that is, comes into Heaven; except the one who carries
the angelic with him out of the world; and the angelic has within it the
knowledge of the way, out of the walking of it, and the walking of the way
through the knowledge of it", D.P. 60. The celestial proprium is the
natural proprium created from the Lord as Father, redeemed by the Lord as Son,
and regenerated by the Lord as Holy Spirit. Thus the celestial proprium is the
image of the glorified Human of the Lord. The natural proprium of which the
principle is the Remains, is purely the Lord's. "There is not anything
man's own, but it appears to him as if it were", D.P. 78. "Although
all things that man perceives, and thence thinks and knows, and in accordance
with the perception wills and does, inflow, nevertheless it is of the Lord's
Divine Providence that this appears as if of man, for otherwise man would
receive nothing, thus would not be endowed with any understanding or
wisdom", D.P. 76. The angelic proprium in man is natural out of celestial
origin. In that natural proprium each man is as if his, just as in the
celestial proprium each Angel is as if his. From that natural proprium there
surges forth, as a sphere, an own natural. The sphere of each true society is
therefore the blessed commuitication of the own naturals of each and all, an
interchange or an interaction of uses, diverse in themselves and universal all
together.
The infernal proprium is
the denial and the violation of that natural proprium, the good affections of
which it bent down to evil lusts by an abused free and rational, and thence the
true things thereof into false, and the good uses thereof into evil ones. “The evil uses, too are from the spiritual
Sun but the good uses are converted into evil ones in hell", D.L.W. 348.
Just as all devils have been men, just so all lusts have been affections. The
affection is simple, and as such it is celestial by origin and nature, and in
essence it is innocence. Various simple affections, entangled together and
finally by inheritance grown together, as the separate fibres of nerves and
muscles round the
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lips of the Most Ancient
grew fixed in the posterity, make one evil desire. The difficult conversion of
evil concupiscences into good affections, viewed otherwise, would be the
conversion of wolves into sheep, which is an abominable absurdity of the
Protestants; but it is the laborious unravelling, the soaking loose and the
bending back of simple affections knotted awry, each of them, as it might be
said of nerves and muscles, from its distorted, disrupted, twisted position
into its suitable place. The infernal proprium with man is the natural
as-if-proprium – pro private -- from
the Lord, with him degenerated, stolen, counterfeited into an unnatural
proprium, an infernal counterpart which does not cease to do violence to its
archetype (note in Dutch the root wel of
geweld [violence] points to the will
run wild); so that the natural proprium as the Lord had meant it to be, lies
there jammed in the infernal proprium, imprisoned, sick, naked, hungry,
thirsty, a stranger, a widow, an orphan, needy, lame, blind, deaf. It cries for
liberation from that infernal grasp. Only by the Word, by which all natural
propriums, all natural qualities of men and things have been made that have
been made, is it liberated, by the Word in the genuine sense or by the Doctrine
from the Lord, for the Doctrine is the genuine sense, and "the genuine
sense of the Word no others perceive than those who are enlightened", A.C
10323.
From this consideration it becomes manifest that in the name familiar to all of us of "the own" or "the proprium" more qualities and characteristics lie enclosed than are accounted for in the vague general idea of "nothing but evil". For that was well known to the old churches thinking three gods; yea, all too well, for with that premised and stressed generality they purposely obscured the particulars, thus putting a corn measure over the candle light. But hy considering the proprium in a vague generality as nothing hut evil, the following as it were algebraic equation originates: the proprium is the evil, the evil is the proprium, thence the infernal proprium is the infernal evil or a pleonasm, and the celestial proprium is the celestial evil or a contradiction in terminis. This too, as a reductio ad absurdum