Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/222

38 that leadeth to those higher regions. They in whom spiritual, moral, political and scientific things are in this subordination, have all their thoughts and actions influenced by justice and judgment, because the light of truth, which is also the light of heaven, from the highest region, enlighteneth what is below, just as the light of the sun, passing through the atmospheres, and air, progressively, enlighteneth the eyes of men and of beasts and fishes. But the case is altered with those who do not love truth for truth's sake, but with a view to their own glory and reputation; things of a theological nature, in such, reside in the last region where scientifics have their abode, and in some instances mix with the scientifics, but in other instances cannot mix; under these, in the same region, is the residence of political things, and under them of moral; for in such persons the two higher regions are not opened on the right side, so that they have no interior discernment of true judgment, nor any affection for justice, but only a certain ingenuity, whereby they can converse on every subject with seeming intelligence, and confirm whatever they please with an appearance of reason; but the objects of reason, which they are most enamoured of, are falses, because these cohere, and unite with, the fallacies of the senses. Hence it is that there are so many people in the world, who no more see the truths of doctrine derived from the word, than men born blind can see the objects of nature, and when they hear such truths they close their nostrils, lest the odour thereof should offend them, and create aversion; whereas to the reception of falses they open all their senses, and drink them in with the same greediness that a whale swalloweth water. . I was once meditating about the dragon, the beast, and the false