Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/236

52 Protestants, but still in a degree kept closed up, in consequence of a ruling maxim amongst them, that the understanding is to be kept bound under obedieitce to faith. The case however is totally reversed in the New Church, wherein it is allowed to enter with the understanding, and to penetrate into all its secrets, and likewise to confirm them by the Word; and the reason is, because its doctrinals are a chain of truths revealed from the Lord by the Word, and the rational confirmation thereof causeth the understanding to be opened more and more upwards, and thereby to be elevated into the light which the angels of heaven enjoy, which light in it's essence is truth, wherein the acknowledgment of the Lord as God of heaven and earth shineth with resplendent glory. This is understood by the writing over the gate of the temple, Now it is allowable, and also by the veil removed from before the cherub in the sacred place, for it is an established law of the New Church that falsities close the understanding, and that truths open it. After this I saw as it were an infant over my head, holding a paper in his hand, who as he approached me grew up to the stature of a middle-sized man; he was an angel from the third heaven, where all appear at a distance like infants; when he was come near, he held forth the paper to me, which being written with circumflex letters, such as are used in that heaven, I returned it back, and desired him to explain the meaning of its contents in words adapted to my ideas; then he replied, "The contents are these; Enter from henceforth into the mysteries of the Word which hath heretofore been closed up, for all the truths contained therein are so many mirrors of the Lord." See No. 508.