Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/142

46 than any man can ever sustain, and that He enduied them alone, and by His own power overcame evil, or the devil and all hell, is also evident. . . . An angel can never be tempted of the devil, because, being in the Lord, evil spirits cannot approach him even distantly. They would instantly be seized with terror and fright. Much less could hell approach to the Lord if He had been born Divine, that is, without an adherence of evil from the mother. That the Lord bore the iniquities and evils of mankind, is a form of speaking common with preachers; but for Him to take upon Himself iniquities and evils otherwise than in the hereditary way, was impossible. The Divine Nature is not susceptible of evil. Wherefore, that He might overcome evil by His own strength, which no man ever could or can do, and might thus alone become righteousness, He was willing to be born as another man. Otherwise there would have been no need that He should be born; for He might have assumed the Human Essence without nativity, as sometimes He had formerly done, when He appeared to those of the Most Ancient Church, and likewise to the prophets. But in order that He might also put on evil, to fight against and conquer it, and might thus at the same time join together in Himself the Divine Essence and the Human Essence, He came into the world. The Lord, however, had no actual evil, or evil that was His own, as He Himself declares in John: "Which of you convicteth Me of sin?" (viii 46.) (A. C. n. 1573.)

It is known that the Lord was born as another man, that when an infant He learned to talk as another infant, and that then He grew in knowledge, and in intelligence, and in wisdom. It is evident from this that His human was not Divine from nativity, but that He made it Divine by His own power. It was by His own power, because He was conceived of Jehovah; and hence the inmost of His life was Jehovah Himself. For the inmost of the life of every man, which is called the soul, is from the father; and what that inmost puts on, which is called the body, is from the mother. That the inmost of life, which is from the father, is continually flowing in and operating upon the external which is from the mother, and endeavouring to make this like itself, even in the womb, can be seen from children, in that they are born into the natural qualities of the father; and sometimes grandsons and great-grandsons into the natural qualities of the grandfather and great-grandfather, because the soul, which is from the father, continually wills to make the external, which is