Page:Arcana Coelestia (Potts) vol 1.djvu/145

 things contrary, denoted by "multiplying offenses." It is also said in Nahum, of those who desire to enter into the mysteries of faith, "The horseman mounting, and the flame of the sword, and the flash of the spear, and a multitude of the slain" (iii. 3).

. Each particular expression in this verse involves so many arcana of deepest import (applicable to the genius of this people who perished by the flood, a genius totally different from that of those who lived subsequent to the flood), that it is impossible to set them forth. We will briefly observe that their first parents, who constituted the Most Ancient Church, were celestial men, and consequently had celestial seeds implanted in them; whence their descendants had seed in them from a celestial origin. Seed from a celestial origin is such that love rules the whole mind and makes it a one. For the human mind consists of two parts, the will and the understanding. Love or good belongs to the will, faith or truth to the understanding; and from love or good those most ancient people perceived what belongs to faith or truth, so that their mind was a one. With the posterity of such a race, seed of the same celestial origin necessarily remains, so that any falling away from truth and good on their part is most perilous, since their whole mind becomes so perverted as to render a restoration in the other life scarcely possible. It is otherwise with those who do not possess celestial but only spiritual seed, as did the people after the flood, and as also do the people of the present day. There is no love in these, consequently no will of good, but still there is a capability of faith, or understanding of truth, by means of which they can be brought to some degree of charity, although by a different way, namely, by the insinuation of conscience from the Lord grounded in the knowledges of truth and the derivative good. Their state is therefore quite different from that of the antediluvians, concerning which state, of the Lord's Divine mercy hereafter. These are arcana with which the present generation are utterly unacquainted, for at the present day none know what the celestial man is nor even what the spiritual man is, and still less what is the quality of the human mind and life thence resulting, and the consequent state after death.