Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/449

 was in-rooted in that people from their first parents. Hence it is that no church could be instituted, but that the things of the church could only be represented, among that people. The church is represented when man places worship in externals,—but in such externals as correspond to heavenly things. Then internal things are represented by the external; and the internal are open to heaven, with which there is thus conjunction. Therefore, in order that the Israelitish people might be able to represent, when their interiors were without the faith and love of heaven,—even full of the love of self and the world,—those interiors were overveiled. The externals could thus communicate with spirits, and by them with angels, without internals; whereas if the internals had not been overveiled they would have been open, and then the representative would have been destroyed, because things abominable would have burst forth and contaminated. That people more than others could be thus overveiled, because they adored the externals [of worship] more than others, and supposed the holy, yea, the Divine to be in them. (ib. n. 8788.)

A church is representative when there is internal worship in the external; but the representative of a church is when there is no internal worship, and yet there is external. In each case there are nearly similar external rituals,—namely, similar statutes, similar laws, and similar precepts; but in a representative church the externals so correspond with internals as to make one, while in the representative of a church there is no correspondence, because the externals are either without internals, or at variance with them. In a representative church celestial and spiritual love is principal; while in the representative of a church corporeal and worldly love is principal. Celestial and spiritual love is the internal itself; and where there is no celestial and spiritual, but only corporeal and worldly love, the external is without an internal. The Ancient church which existed after the flood was a representative church; but that which was established among the posterity of Jacob was merely the representative of a church. But that the distinction may appear more evident, let it be illustrated by examples:—In the representative church the Divine worship was upon mountains, because mountains signified celestial love, and in the highest sense the Lord; and when they were holding their worship on mountains they were in its holiness, because they were then at the same time in celestial love. In the representative church Divine worship was also in