Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/290

194 senses, called natural, spiritual, and celestial (T. C. R n. 289 )

The laws of spiritual life, the laws of civil life, and the laws of moral life also, are delivered in the ten precepts of the decalogue; in the first three the laws of spiritual life, in the following four the laws of civil life, and in the last three the laws oi moral life. (H. H. n. 531.)

"Thou shalt have no other God before my faces" These are the words of the first commandment (Exod. xx. 3; Deut. v. 7). In the natural sense, which is the sense of the letter, its most obvious meaning is that idols must not be worshipped; for it follows:—" Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness [of any thing] that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, and shalt not serve them; for I am Jehovah thy God, a jealous God" (ver. 4, 5). The reason why this commandment most obviously means that idols must not be worshipped was, that before that time, and after it down to the Lord's advent, there was idolatrous worship in much of the Asiatic world. . . . The Israelitish nation also was in such worship when in Egypt, as may appear from the golden calf which they worshipped in the wilderness instead of Jehovah; and it appears from many places in the Word, both historical and prophetical, that they were not afterwards alienated from that worship.

This commandment, "Thou shalt have no other God before my faces" also means in the natural sense that no man, dead or alive, shall be worshipped as God; which also was done in the Asiatic world, and in various neighbouring regions. Many gods of the Gentiles were no other than men; as Baal, Ashtaroth, Chemosh, Milcom, Beelzebub; and at Athens and Rome, Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Apollo, Pallas, etc. Some of these they at first worshipped as saints, afterwards as powers (numina), and finally as gods. That they also worshipped living men as gods is evident from the edict of Darius the Mede, that for thirty days no man should ask anything of God, but only of the king, or otherwise he should be cast into a den of lions (Dan. vi. 8 to the end).

In the natural sense, which is that of the letter, this commandment also means that no one but God, and nothing but that which proceeds from God, is to be loved above all things; which is also according to the Lord's words in Matt.