Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/141

Rh church from the literal sense of the Word being misunderstood, and from an entire ignorance of the existence of a spiritual sense, which is at length revealed for the use of the New Jerusalem. By this sense we are taught, that the coming of the Lord in the clouds of heaven denotes, not his personal appearance in the air, but his appearance in the divine truth of the Word, which is himself. The clouds of heaven, in which he will come, are the literal sense of the Word, which in a great degree obscures it's spiritual sense, just as a cloud obscures the direct light of the sun; the power and glory are it's spiritual sense; the angels demote heaven; and these are said to accompany the Lord, because where he is, there is heaven. Moreover by the new heaven and the new earth is understood a New Church, as well in the heavens, as on the earth.

It is believed in the New Church, that the last judgment, as predicted by the Lord in the Gospels, has already actually taken place in the spiritual world: and this belief is grounded, not merely on the assertions of a most illustrious Author, who declares himself to have been an eye-witness of it, but on various extraordinary circumstances connected with the present state of society in the natural world, and on the positive appearance of a new dispensation of divine mercy among men: all which may well be considered as the test and proof of the accomplishment of the last judgment, and of the second advent of the Lord.

Not to dwell on the great ecclesiastical and political changes, which have of late years taken place among the nations of Christendom, let us only advert to that new state of spiritual or religious liberty, which has sprung up in the midst of these changes; and we shall be convinced of the reality of the facts