Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/178



Holy Spirit is the Divine truth and also the Divine virtue and operation proceeding from the one only God, in whom there is a Divine Trinity, proceeding therefore from the Lord God the Saviour. (T. C. R. n. 138.)

The Divine operation is effected by the Divine truth which proceeds from the Lord; and that which proceeds is of one and the same essence with Him from whom it proceeds. Like these three, the soul, the body, and the proceeding [action], which together make one essence,—with man merely human, but with the Lord Divine and at the same time Human; united after the glorification, just as the prior with its posterior, and as the essence with its form. Thus the three essentials which are called the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are one in the Lord. (T. C. R. n. 139.)

That the Comforter or Holy Spirit is Divine Truth proceeding from the Lord is very evident, for it is said the Lord Himself told them the Truth, and declared that when He should go away He would send the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, who should guide them into all truth, and that He would not speak from Himself, but from the Lord. . . . And because Divine Truth proceeds from the Human of the Lord glorified, and not immediately from His very Divine,—inasmuch as this in itself was glorified from eternity,—therefore it is said, "The Holy Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified" (John vii. 39). They greatly wonder in heaven that the man of the Church does not know that the Holy Spirit, which is Divine Truth, proceeds from the Human of the Lord and not immediately from His Divine; when yet the doctrine received in the whole Christian world teaches that, "As is the Father, so also is the Son, uncreate, infinite, eternal, omnipotent, God, Lord; neither of them is first or last, nor greatest or least. Christ is God and Man; God from the nature of the Father, and Man from the nature of the mother; but although He is God and Man, yet nevertheless they are not two, but one Christ; He is one, not by changing the divinity into the humanity, but by the divinity receiving to itself the humanity. He is altogether one, not by a commixture of two natures, but one person alone; because as the body and soul are