Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/331

Rh Him. It may hence appear what in those miracles is meant by faith. The third reason was that all the diseases which the Lord healed represented and therefore signified the spiritual diseases corresponding to those natural diseases; and spiritual diseases can only be healed by the Lord, and indeed through looking up to His Divine omnipotence, and through repentance of life; and therefore He also said at different times, "Thy sins are remitted thee; go and sin no more." This faith too was represented and signified by that miraculous faith. But the faith by which spiritual diseases are healed by the Lord cannot be given otherwise than by truths from the Word and a life according to them; the very truths and life according to them constitute the nature of the faith; but upon this subject more will be said in what follows. ... When the disciples could not heal the lunatic, "Jesus said unto them, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you?" and Jesus healed him; and said to the disciples, that they could not heal him because of their unbelief (Matt. xvii. 14-20). "When Jesus came into His own country, ... and they were offended in Him, He said, A prophet is not without honour save in his own country, and in his own house. And He did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief" (Matt. xiii. 57, 58). The reason why the Lord called the disciples men of little faith when they could not do miracles in His name, and why He could not do miracles in His own country on account of their unbelief, was that although the disciples did indeed believe the Lord to be the Messiah or Christ and also the Son of God, and the Prophet of whom it was written in the Word, they did not yet believe Him to be very God Omnipotent, and that Jehovah the Father was in Him; and in so far as they believed Him to be a man and not at the same time God, His Divine, to which omnipotence belongs, could not become present with them by faith. For faith makes the Lord present, as was said above; but faith in Him as a man only, does not bring his Divine omnipotence present. This also is the reason why they cannot be saved in the world at this day who look to His Human and not at the same time to His Divine, as is the case with Socinians and Arians. It was for the same reason that the Lord could not do miracles in His own country; for there they had seen Him from infancy as another man, and could not therefore add to this idea the idea of His Divinity; and though the Lord is indeed present in man when this idea is not present, yet not with Divine omnipotence; for faith causes the Lord to be present in man according to the nature of the perception of Him. (A. E. n. 815.)