Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/179

Rh one man, so God and Man is one Christ." This is from the Creed of Athanasius. Now, since the Divine and Human of the Lord are not two, but one only person, and are united as the soul and body, it may be known that the Divine [effluence] which is called the Holy Spirit goes forth and proceeds from His Divine, by the Human, thus from the Divine Human; for nothing whatever can proceed from the body except as from the soul by the body, inasmuch as all the life of the body is from its soul. And because, as is the Father so is the Son, uncreate, infinite, eternal, omnipotent, God and Lord, and neither of them is first or last, nor greatest or least, it follows that the Divine Proceeding which is called the Holy Spirit, goes forth from the very Divine of the Lord by His Human, and not from another Divine which is called the Father; for the Lord teaches that He and the Father are one, and that the Father is in Him, and He in the Father. But that most in the Christian world think otherwise in their hearts, and therefore believe otherwise, the angels have said is from the fact that they think of the Human of the Lord as separate from His Divine; which yet is contrary to the doctrine which teaches that the Divine and Human of the Lord are not two persons, but only one person, and united as soul and body. . . . Since the proceeding Divine which is Divine Truth flows into man both immediately, and mediately through angels and spirits, it is therefore believed that the Holy Spirit is a third person, distinct from the two who are called the Father and the Son; but I am able to assert that no one in heaven knows any other Holy Divine than the Divine Truth proceeding from the Lord. (A. E. n. 183.)

Now, because the Divine Truth is meant by the Holy Spirit, and this was in the Lord, and was the Lord Himself (John xiv. 6), and because it could not therefore proceed from any other source, He said, "The Holy Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified" (vii. 39) ; and after the glorification, "He breathed on the disciples, and said, Receive ye the Holy Spirit" (xx. 22). The reason why the Lord breathed upon the disciples and said this was, that breathing upon was an external representative sign of Divine inspiration. But inspiration is insertion into angelic societies. (T. C. R. n. 140.)

The Holy Spirit is called the proceeding Divine, yet no one knows why it is called proceeding. This is not known, because until now it has been unknown that the Lord appears before the angels as a sun, and that heat, which in its essence is Divine love, and light, which in its essence is Divine wisdom, proceeds from that sun. So long as these truths were unknown it could not be known but that the proceeding Divine was a Divine by itself, and as the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity declares, that there is one person of the Father, another of the Son,