Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/152

56 He, by the most grievous combats in temptation, reduced all things in Himself to Divine order, even until there remained nothing at all of the human which He had derived from the mother; so that He was made, not new as another man but altogether Divine. For a man who is made new by regeneration still retains in himself an inclination to evil, yea, evil itself, but is withheld from the evil by an influx of the life of the Lord's love, and this by exceedingly strong power. But the Lord entirely cast out every evil which was hereditary to Him from the mother, and made Himself Divine even as to the vessels, that is as to truths. That is what in the Word is called glorification. (A. C. n. 3318.)

As the Lord from the beginning had a human from the mother, and successively put this off, therefore during His abode in the world He passed through two states, one a state of humiliation, or exinanition, and the other a state of glorification, or union with the Divine, which is called the Father. The state of humiliation was at the time and in the degree that He was in the human from the mother; and the state of glorification was at the time and in the degree that He was in the Human from the Father. In the state of humiliation He prayed unto the Father as to one different from Himself; but in the state of glorification He spake with the Father as with Himself. In this latter state He said that the Father was in Him, and He in the Father, and that the Father and He were one; but in the state of humiliation He endured temptations, and suffered the cross, and prayed to the Father that He would not forsake Him. For the Divine could not be tempted; much less could it suffer the cross. From all this, then, it appears that by temptations, and at the same time continual victories, and by the passion of the cross which was the last of the temptations, He entirely conquered the hells and fully glorified the human, as was shown above. That the Lord put off the human from the mother, and put on a Human from the very Divine, which is called the Father, appears also from the fact that so often as the Lord spake by His own mouth unto the mother, He did not call her "mother," but "woman." (L. n. 35.)

It is known from the Word by the Evangelists, that the Lord adored and prayed to Jehovah His Father; and this as from Himself to another, although Jehovah was in Him. But the state in which the Lord then was was His state of humiliation, the nature of which has been described; namely, that He was then in the infirm human derived from the mother. But in the degree that He put off that human and put on the Divine He was in a different state, which is called His state of glorification. In the former state He adored Jehovah as one different from