Page:Arcana Coelestia (Potts) vol 1.djvu/139



and in another place:—

Again:—

Men also as being possessed of power are called "gods," as in Ps. lxxxii. 6; John x. 34, 35. Moses also is said to be "a god to Pharaoh" (Exod. vii. 1). For this reason the word "God" in the Hebrew is in the plural number—"Elohim." But as the angels do not possess the least power of themselves, as indeed they acknowledge, but solely from the Lord, and as there is but one God, therefore by "Jehovah God" in the Word is meant the Lord alone. But where anything is effected by the ministry of angels, as in the first chapter of Genesis, He is spoken of in the plural number. Here also because the celestial man, as man, could not be put in comparison with the Lord, but with the angels only, it is said, the man "is become as one of us, knowing good and evil," that is, is wise and intelligent.

. The other arcanum is that had they been instructed in the mysteries of faith they would have perished eternally, which is signified by the words, "now lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of lives, and eat, and live to eternity." The case is this: When men have become inverted orders of life, and are unwilling to live, or to become wise, except from themselves and from their Own, they reason about everything they hear respecting faith, as to whether it is so, or not; and as they do this from themselves and from their own things of sense and of memory-knowledge, it must needs lead to denial, and consequently to blasphemy and profanation, so that at length they do not scruple to mix up profane things with holy. When a man becomes like this, he is so condemned in the other life that there remains for him no hope of salvation. For things mixed up by profanation remain so mixed up, so that whenever any idea of something holy presents